


Begin Transmission

by doctorkaitlyn



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Vernon Boyd & Erica Reyes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Background Character Death, Blood and Gore, Complete, Demonic Possession, Derek Hale Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociation, Emissary in Training Stiles Stilinski, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Getting Together, Hopeful Ending, Hospitalization, Implied Sexual Content, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Making Out, NaNoWriMo, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Possession, Scars, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Burn, Stiles Stilinski Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Stiles Stilinski Has Scars, Time Skips, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-09-15 13:03:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 55,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9236333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: After the events with the alpha pack and the darach, Stiles is thrust into his new role as the emissary for Scott's pack.  It's a demanding position, one that requires years and years of study.But, when he rushes a spell in an attempt to keep Scott's pack safe, Stiles inadvertently summons a being, a malevolent being who desires nothing more than chaos and blood and power.  He's completely powerless to stop the spirit from possessing him, and he's unable to stop it from bringing Derek along for the ride.That means it's up to Scott and the others, still dealing with the effects of the Nemeton, to try and find Stiles & Derek.But finding them, stopping the malevolent being, that's only the beginning.  After all is said and done, it's not stopping the being that's the hard part.It's dealing with the scars that it leaves behind.





	1. i, i: Derek

**Author's Note:**

> **update** : the amazing [dansunedisco](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dansunedisco) made a wonderful picspam for this fic! it can be found [here!](http://jonnsansa.tumblr.com/post/155824128063/begin-transmission-by-banshee-cheekbones)
> 
> this was originally written for Nanowrimo in 2014 and is essentially an alternate season 3B that takes place in the pack's senior year. As the story has already been completed and cursorily edited, I'll hopefully be able to put a new chapter up every few days. I'm unsure of total chapter count at this point, but the story is approximately 69,500 words. 
> 
> I'll be adding new tags and warnings with each chapter, so please heed those. As an overall warning, this story is going to contain quite a bit of blood and gore, as well as descriptions of corpses, so please keep all of that in mind if that's something you try to avoid.
> 
> if you have any questions, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com/) :)

It's 10:30 on a Tuesday morning when Derek finds the door of his loft open.

It's not completely open; it's just a few inches, barely wide enough to see through. Nonetheless, although there are plenty of plausible excuses that could explain the situation, it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He _knows_ that he closed and locked it before he left, so he sets his coffee on the ground and listens, claws sliding out as a precautionary measure. He can hear someone's heartbeat going slow and steady on the other side of the door, which is bizarre because when he inhales, he can smell mint toothpaste, cheap aftershave and sugar. He knows that scent almost as well as he knows his own, knows that it signifies _Stiles_. But Stiles' heartbeat is rarely slow or steady; it's perpetually quick, rabbiting against his rib cage, nearly deafening after he's played a lacrosse match.

It doesn't fit with what he knows to be true about Stiles, but it isn't an inconsistency that he can solve by sound and smell alone. He pulls the door open wide enough to step inside and sure enough, Stiles is standing in the middle of the room, staring towards the window, his arms dangling loosely at his sides. There's a brief uptick in his heart rate once Derek closes the door but other than that, Stiles doesn't stir. It isn't the first time he's dropped by Derek's by himself and it isn't the first time that he's come by when he's supposed to be at school, but there's something strange in the way he's simply standing motionless, rather than making himself right at home and flopping on Derek's furniture like he owns all of it.

“Stiles?” There’s another uptick and this time, Stiles' fingers twitch slightly. “Shouldn't you be at school?”

“Yeah.” Stiles finally turns around and although he's smiling slightly, Derek feels a distinct shiver of _danger_ course through his body. Stiles looks like he's slightly out of focus, like a blurry picture. Derek knows that there is no possible way that what he's seeing is real but no matter how many times he blinks, the image doesn't change or clear up. “Do you mind that I'm here?” 

“No. Not at all.” Derek sniffs the air again and this time, now that he's closer to Stiles, he can smell something different, something earthy underneath the sugar and mint. It reminds him of mud after a particularly rainy day. That in itself doesn’t raise too much alarm; being around magical herbs and plants and smelling like nature goes hand in hand with being an emissary in training. 

But for some reason, the smell being around Stiles just doesn't make sense. Derek’s spent a lot of time in close quarters with Stiles and the rest of Scott’s pack since the darach and the alpha pack, and not once has he smelt this particular mixture. It makes his stomach churn.

“Do you want some coffee?” he asks, trying to ignore that his wolf is growling more and more with each moment. “I just have to grab it out of the hallway.” Derek turns back towards the door, but he's barely touched the handle before Stiles lays a hand on his shoulder. There's far too much force behind the action, force that just isn't human. 

“No.” It's still Stiles' voice, but Derek is almost completely certain that Stiles isn't the one speaking. His claws slide back out and as he turns around, his fangs press through his gums. Stiles is still gripping his shoulder and although his eyes are still amber, there's a luminescent sheen over them. He glances down towards where Stiles' fingers are making pain radiate through his shoulder and he tries to move against the grip. That doesn't work (all it does is bring an ugly, _ugly_ smirk to Stiles' face), so he swings with his free arm, aiming to rake his claws across Stiles' ribs. Instead, in the blink of an eye, biting fingers wrap tight around his wrist. 

He has less than a second to prepare himself for the sickening _snap_ that comes from his wrist being broken. He howls as the pain surges through every nerve in his arm, his vision skipping from wolf to human and back again. Now that Stiles is mere inches away from him, his normal sugary smell is completely overwhelmed by the stench of mud and dirt and something rotten. Between the pain and the scent, it's all Derek can do to not throw up. 

“Of all the people in this town to give a key to...” The thing using Stiles' body tsks and drops his broken wrist. “You never choose the right people to trust, do you?” 

“Stiles?” Derek knows that appealing to Stiles' humanity is probably useless, but he has to give it a shot. “Stiles, can you hear me?” The thing in Stiles’ body just laughs again and presses two fingers underneath Derek’s chin, forcing his head up. The sheen over his eyes is nearly opaque now.

“He can't hear you, Derek.” The words are laced with nothing more than pure cruelty, which makes it that much more shocking when they're followed by a kiss. It's brutal and searing and when Stiles pulls away, there's a small, jagged tear on his bottom lip from Derek's fang puncturing his skin. Derek's mouth tastes like damp earth and the thing wearing Stiles' body merely smiles when Derek spits at his feet.

“You foolish man,” it says softly. 

That's when Derek feels it. 

It's a constricting feeling that starts in the area behind his heart. It rapidly spreads through his body, thick and suffocating as molasses. It makes the feeling of his bones knitting back together feel like mere tickling. When it reaches his head, the pressure at his temples makes him drop to his knees and slam his eyes shut. He manages to hold on for a few moments, but the pressure just keeps growing and growing, and before he can stop himself, he screams, only faintly aware that his claws are out and digging into the palms of his hands. 

Before the scream dies in his throat, he plunges mercifully into unconsciousness with the smell of his own blood thick in his nostrils.


	2. i, ii: Scott

It's lunchtime before Scott realizes that something isn't right.

Stiles hadn't shown up for their early morning lacrosse practice, but that wasn't completely strange; his aspirations of remaining on first line were as strong as ever, but he hadn't been sleeping a lot lately. As soon as he'd had the role of emissary thrust upon him, he’d started staying up until three or four in the morning, constantly texting Scott questions and observations. It was all too possible that he'd just slept in, so Scott sent him a text, a quick _yo sleepyhead, coach isn't happy with you._

He hadn't received an answer, not to that text or to any of the others he’d sent. He’d combed through his memory multiple times, tried to think of something that he might have missed, but he came up blank. His inner wolf was on edge; his senses were hypersensitive, and trying to keep his eyes from shifting was a struggle that kept him from paying any kind of meaningful attention in his classes. 

When lunch comes around with no sign of his best friend stumbling into the cafeteria with horrifying bedhead, the wolf is so agitated that Scott can’t ignore it any longer. Stiles may not be a werewolf, but he’s still pack, and _something_ has happened to him. Scott can feel it, as clearly as if something had happened to his own body. 

When the bell for fifth period rings, it’s so loud that Scott has to clamp his hands over his ears. When it finally stops, he looks up and realizes that Allison, Lydia and Isaac are all staring at him with wide eyes and pale faces.

“Scott, what's wrong?” Isaac asks, leaning across the table, blue eyes spotted with flecks of gold. His heartbeat is thunderously loud in Scott's ears, spiked with worry, and there’s fear emanating off him in waves. It’s a sour smell, one that makes Scott's stomach churn, one that he has smelled far too often over the last few months. While Scott feels certain that something is wrong, realistically, he’s still operating based off a hunch, and he doesn’t want his friends to be so worried, so _scared_ , based on nothing more than a feeling.

So he swallows deeply, closes his eyes, and hopes that Isaac somehow can’t smell the panic that’s inevitably rolling off him.

“It's nothing,” he finally says, forcing a weak smile onto his face. “Just a headache.”

&.

The rest of the afternoon is a blur, a blur only defined by the moments where he texts Stiles again, hoping in vain that he'll get a response.

_hey dude wake up_

_you need me to come pick you up?_

_are you okay?_

_Stiles what’s going on?_

By the time the last bell of the day rings, he still hasn’t received an answer, and the sickening feeling of dread he’s been experiencing most of the day spikes. He springs out of his chair, bypasses the lockers and heads straight for his dirt bike, hoping that he'll be able to avoid the rest of the pack. He knows that they've noticed his behaviour, but if he can get out of the school without running into any of them, he should be able to avoid any more prying eyes or intruding questions.

It doesn't work.

When he jogs into the parking lot, Isaac is already there, leaning against the bike, arms crossed over his chest, carefully inspecting his nails.

“So you're heading over to Stiles’, right?” he asks, sounding supremely bored. Scott immediately sees through the act; Isaac may have perfected the cool and collected look, but he hasn’t quite learned how to master his heartbeat.

“Yeah,” Scott admits. “There's something wrong. I haven't heard from him all day.”

“Maybe his phone died,” Isaac shrugs, swinging one of his long legs over the bike. “Or he's sick. Or he just didn't feel like talking to anyone today.”

“Isaac, trust me. I just...” He trails off into a frustrated groan, fiddling with the strap on his helmet. “He's my best friend. I just _know_.” Isaac stays silent for a moment, chewing on the corner of his mouth and staring down at the ground. Finally, he nods and slides back on the seat so that Scott can clamber on. 

“I believe you,” he says. “I'm coming with you.” With that, he pulls Scott’s spare helmet over his head, effectively ending the conversation. Scott just sighs quietly before he pulls his own down and starts the bike up.

&.

The Stilinski’s house is empty.

The Jeep is nowhere in sight. As soon as Scott turns off the bike, the feeling of _danger_ and _threat to the pack_ spikes through the roof. He can't hear any heartbeats in the house or the surrounding area, except for some small animals off in the trees, but it still feels like something is nearby, watching him. 

“Do you feel that?” Isaac asks. His words are accompanied by a quiet _snick_ as his claws slide out. 

“Yeah,” Scott says quietly, setting his helmet down and approaching the front door. As soon as he mounts the steps, his stomach sinks, dropping somewhere below his feet. 

The door is open. It's just a few inches or so, but it furthers Scott’s feeling that something is horribly wrong. The sheriff has always been vigilant about locking the door; he'd drilled it into Scott and Stiles' heads when they were children, told them how important it was to always make sure that everything was closed up when they left the house. For all of Stiles' faults, for all of the times where his brain moves too fast for him to remember things like eating or sleeping, Scott has _never_ heard of him forgetting to close and the door. 

He pushes the door completely open and steps into the front hallway, Isaac right at his back. It's no more of a disaster than usual; Stiles' shoes are kicked all over the place, and one of his jackets is laying on the floor just inside the doorway. 

But there's a _smell_ , like nothing Scott has ever experienced before. It makes the sour stench of fear almost bearable. It's similar to spoiled meat, but mainly it just smells _rotten_ , like the physical embodiment of death and disease. 

“God, what is that?” Isaac groans from behind him. When Scott looks back, Isaac's already pale skin has gone pallid, and his arm is pressed against his mouth, like he's trying very hard not to throw up. 

“I don't know,” Scott answers. When he reaches the bottom of the stairwell, he takes a moment to listen again, to make sure that he hasn’t missed a faint heartbeat. While he can hear the low hum of the fridge running in the kitchen, the relentless ticking of a clock and someone slamming a car door down the street, the only heartbeat is Isaac's, tripping along behind him in a rhythm Scott is only too familiar with. 

“Stiles?” he calls as he walks up the stairs. The banister looks more scuffed up than usual, and one of the rods supporting the railing has a crack in it, like someone stumbled (or was pushed) into it. By the time he reaches the landing at the top, the smell is so intense that he too has to cover his nose, just to avoid spilling his guts onto the threadbare rug covering the floor. 

Stiles’ room is at the end of the hallway, and Scott is halfway there when he feels something crunch underneath his sneakers. When he looks, he finds a green plant stuck to the bottom of his shoe. It looks like a spider web, composed of intersecting lines. When he stoops down and rolls it between his fingers, it crumbles into dust. He tries to keep a picture of the plant in his mind so that he can describe it to Deaton, and he keeps walking. When he reaches the end of the hall, he finds Stiles' door ajar, and he pushes it open with the tips of his fingers. 

What he's met with is no less than an absolute disaster. 

It's only been a week or so since Scott was last over but in that time, Stiles' room has completely lost any semblance of organization or cleanliness. His laundry basket is tipped over, spilling clothes across the floor. His sheets are hanging half off the bed, like they were shoved there by a series of violent kicks. His desk is hardly visible underneath stacks of papers, ancient looking books and old mason jars filled with dirt and other materials Scott doesn’t recognize. Two or three of the jars have fallen and are laying in a heap of glass and dust on the floor. The curtains are hanging askew, and there's a dull brown stain on one of them that looks an awful lot like old blood.

Most of Stiles' posters have been torn off the wall and are crumpled against the baseboards, slashed and ripped like someone took a knife to them. In their place are parchment thin pages from books, secured to the wall with thumbtacks. The pages themselves are covered in marker lines and slashes of highlighter, and when Scott leans in closer to look at a circled passage, he realizes the entire thing is in what looks like Latin.

“Is he always this messy?” Isaac asks, prodding at the pile of glass and dust with his foot. 

“No, not at all,” Scott replies, running his fingers over one of the fragile pages secured to the wall. Careless as he may occasionally be, Scott doesn't think that Stiles would treat such old texts so horribly, especially since they're all on loan from the Argents or Deaton or Derek. But while the room positively reeks of that rotten smell, when Scott forces himself to block it out, he can't smell any sign that someone else was in the room. It just smells like Stiles. 

When he backs away from the wall, something else crunches beneath Scott’s feet, and he kicks clothes aside until he can see the bare floor beneath. 

There's a dark brown circle smeared on Stiles' floor, filled with sigils and other drawings that could just be meaningless squiggles for all Scott knows. There are three sprigs of the green herb from the hallway also placed in the circle, and their placement is obviously not a casual thing; the distance between them is nearly identical, measured. When Scott leans down and runs his hand over the mark, his fingers come back dry, but the sense of unease that has been plaguing him all afternoon only intensifies. 

“What the fuck is that?” Isaac asks. 

Scott wishes that he could answer that question.

&.

Scott calls Deaton as soon as they step outside. Although he sounds calm and cool, voice steady as always, there is a long pause after Scott describes the sigil that Scott really doesn't like. He calls Derek immediately after he's hung up with Deaton, but there's no answer, which isn't much of a surprise; Scott is pretty sure that it’d be easier to reach Derek by carrier pigeon than by cell phone.

“Maybe we should stop over there first, just to let him know what's going on,” Isaac says. “Maybe he knows something we don’t.” Scott can hear the uneasiness in his voice clear as a bell. Although Isaac and Derek have mostly patched things up, it's been more through time than actual communication. They've never actually acknowledged how Derek treated him, and Isaac has never expressed any interest in moving back into the loft. Nonetheless, he does have a point; aside from Deaton, Derek is the only person in town that Scott thinks might be able to shed some light on the situation. 

When they pull up to Derek's building, they find Stiles' Jeep outside, parked across two spaces. The windows are all rolled up, but the keys are still in the ignition and, thankful that no one else has taken advantage of them, Scott opens the driver's door. 

The rotten smell is so intense and so sudden that this time, he can't help himself; he just barely manages to lean to the side before he throws up, narrowly missing the back tire. Behind him, he hears Isaac quickly stepping away before he does the same. Only when he's positive that he won't get sick again does Scott stand up and wipe at his mouth while peering back into the Jeep. 

There's nothing inside that gives him any more idea of what's going on; there’s just more pages torn from books, mingled with Stiles' lacrosse gear and his backpack. 

They bypass the creaky, painfully slow elevator in favor of the stairs, taking them two at a time. Scott has no idea what they're going to find at the top; he isn't naive enough to think that it'll be anything good, but he hopes at the very least that Stiles will be there, that they'll be able to get _some_ sort of answer. 

The loft _is_ in much better condition than Stiles' bedroom, but that isn't saying much; frankly, Scott doesn't think Derek really has enough furniture for the place to ever be truly trashed. There's a cup of coffee sitting on the ground outside, cold to the touch, obviously abandoned some time ago. As soon as Scott steps inside, he can smell blood, blood that is distinctly werewolf rather than human. They find it in a dark puddle near the door, and when he leans down to touch it, it's completely dry.

“They aren't here,” Isaac says quietly, and when Scott listens, he realizes that Isaac’s right. There are no other heartbeats in the loft, no sign that anyone has been around for hours. There's just a pool of blood that could only have come from Derek and that awful, rotten smell that seems to be seeping out of the very walls themselves.

Stiles is gone, and by the looks of it, Derek is with him.

&.

Scott is reluctant to do it, but Isaac convinces him to call Allison and Lydia and let them know what’s going on. They show up at the loft before Deaton. They're still dressed in their school clothes, but Allison has a knife strapped to her leg and a bow slung over her back. Lydia is carrying an armful of books and loose paper, and it takes a moment for Scott to realize that she's retrieved all of the material from Stiles' bedroom.

“We need to know what we're up against,” she says before Scott can open his mouth. “Besides, I'm the only one that can read archaic Latin.”

“Well, I can too,” Deaton says as he steps through the door. “Do you have a picture of the sigil, Scott?” Scott nods and shows him the pictures he took on his phone, swipes through to a few close-ups of the various symbols and of the herb. Deaton looks at them all closely, his face betraying nothing. 

“It looks like Stiles was attempting a very complicated ritual,” he finally says, zooming in on one particular symbol. 

“What does it mean?” Scott asks. Deaton stoops down, pulls a piece of chalk out of the pocket of his trousers and, consulting the picture again, draws another one of the symbols on the floor. 

“This is a protection sigil. It's usually applied to one particular person. Based on the number of them incorporated into this design, it looks like he was trying to protect multiple people at once,” he explains before drawing another symbol. “This is also for protection, but it's meant to protect a specific area. I have a number of them carved into the walls of the clinic.”

“I've seen that one before,” Lydia says, leaning over Deaton's shoulder and pointing to one of the more complicated symbols in the picture, an entangled mass of whorls and curves. “Stiles was drawing it the other day. He said it was something from a video game.” 

“I'm afraid not,” Deaton sighs, making no attempt to recreate the sigil on the floor. “If Stiles had simply drawn the other sigils in the circle and tried to invoke them, he would have greatly weakened himself. Casting a protection spell is a _very_ exact ritual, and it can be very draining. I wasn't planning on introducing him to the very existence of these rituals for a long time.” He taps the picture again, emphasizing the same symbol that Lydia had recognized.

“He never should have known about this. It is rare to find an emissary who is willing to even discuss the existence of this sigil, let alone tell someone how to use it.” 

“What is it?” Scott asks. Deaton stays quiet for a long moment before he sighs and looks up from the ground, glancing at each of them in turn.

“There are malevolent beings that specifically target emissaries at their weakest moments, when they’ve overstepped their abilities. They seize their bodies and their power.” Tapping his finger off the sigil again, he pointedly looks at Scott. “I can't be certain, but I think that Stiles was trying to protect all of you. Possibly all of Beacon Hills. Maybe he got confused, or perhaps he was trying to increase his own power, so that he could complete the ritual. But he summoned something he had no chance of controlling. Scott...” Deaton's hand drops onto his shoulder and Scott swallows heavily, trying to prepare himself for Deaton’s next words. “I believe that Stiles has been possessed.” 

It's not as if the notion of possession is completely unbelievable; after the darach, Scott is willing to accept that anything is possible, even if it sounds like it was torn from the plot of a horror film. 

But not only is Stiles possessed, but if what Deaton is saying is true, he's been wearing himself thin trying to become more powerful in order to protect them. Scott had noticed that Stiles was more tired than usual, a little evasive at times, but he'd just chalked it up to the side effects of the sacrifice they'd made to protect their parents. 

But how could he have possibly missed this? 

“I need to ask you all something,” Deaton continues. “In the last few weeks, have you noticed anything strange about Stiles? Anything at all?”

“I did,” Allison says quietly before Scott can even begin to comb through his mind. The whole group turns towards her, and she chews on her lip for a second, like she's trying to decide whether or not to speak any further. “I just thought that it was the Nemeton messing with my mind.”

“What happened?” Lydia asks softly, reaching over and tangling their fingers together. “Allison, what did you see?” 

“He looked _blurry_ ,” Allison says, and Scott hears her heartbeat begin to race. “Like when you take a picture of someone and they move just enough for it to turn out a little fuzzy. That's what it looked like, like he wasn't quite all here. But I only noticed it in class a few times and... I didn't think it was real. I thought it was just my mind.” 

“Me too,” Isaac says quietly, and when Scott looks over, Isaac glances up at him. “It was only once, at practice the other day. I just thought that I had sweat in my eyes.” 

“What about you, Scott?” Deaton asks in his perpetually soft voice, expression still unreadable. “Have you seen anything strange?” Scott shuts his eyes and thinks, focuses on the past few days. 

He can’t recall ever seeing Stiles be _blurry_ , but there had been something strange at lacrosse practice, presumably the same day Isaac is talking about.

Since Stiles apparently had a daily quota of smartass remarks to authority figures to fulfill, when Finstock compared them to his dead grandmother for the thousandth time, Stiles had hollered, “Coach, if you don't stop talking about her, she'll never rest in peace!”

Unsurprisingly, Finstock had responded with: “Five laps, Stilinski, _now_!” 

Scott had waited on the bench while Stiles completed his laps. When he came back, his face was bright red and his hair was sodden with sweat, pouring over his cheekbones and dripping off his jaw. He'd collapsed on the grass at Scott's feet and panted for a good five minutes, saying nothing more than an occasional _fuck_ or _goddammit_ , chest heaving. 

Abruptly, he’d stopped panting, and his shoulders had stiffened. His hand lashed out and wrapped around Scott's wrist, and when he'd looked up, Stiles had just been _staring_ at him with huge eyes, sallow and pale like he was sweating off a fever. The grip around his wrist had been biting, like Stiles was grasping him with claws instead of fingers. 

“You alright, buddy?” he’d asked. For a few long seconds, Stiles had simply continued staring at him, mouth closed in a firm line, his gaze sharp as knives. But just as suddenly as the moment had begun, it stopped; Stiles slumped down again, his fingers slipped from Scott's wrist, and he resumed panting, forehead braced against the hard wood of the bench. 

“If I ever have to run five laps again, I fucking quit,” he'd groaned, sounding completely normal, and the moment had slipped from Scott’s mind.

“Couldn't that just have been from the Nemeton?” Scott asks after he's described the event. “That's possible, isn't it?”

“Possibly, but I don’t think that’s the case,” Deaton replies. “That may have been an attempt to possess you as well. There isn't a lot of literature on these beings, but it has been said that they are capable of possessing more than one body at once. Perhaps this creature couldn't possess an Alpha in its weakened state, or perhaps Stiles simply wasn't powerful enough. And it's possible that since it didn't work on you...”

“Derek,” Lydia says. “You think that he has Derek too.” 

“Perhaps. I need to do more research. I have connections with other emissaries who may be able to assist us.”

“Lydia and I can help with the research,” Allison says. “There might be something in my family's bestiary about it.” 

“They haven't been gone for long, maybe a few hours,” Scott says, glancing over towards where the pool of Derek's blood looks inky black under the dim lighting of the loft. “If we move now, we might be able to find them before anything happens.” 

“You need to be careful. All of you,” Deaton says, looking pointedly at each of them in turn. “These beings not only want power, they want chaos and control. There is no telling what it'll do with Stiles' body or with Derek. We need to be prepared for all possibilities.” 

Scott doesn't need to look between the lines to realize that Deaton isn't guaranteeing they'll find them alive.

&.

While Allison and Lydia stay at the loft with Deaton, combing through and translating the pages Stiles has highlighted and stabbed onto the walls of his bedroom, Scott goes with Isaac to break the news to Sheriff Stilinski. It goes about as well as can be expected; for a long time, he sits in silence behind his desk, staring down at his hands, and Scott feels so damn helpless.

It isn't fair. It isn't fair that, as soon as their lives start approaching something resembling normalcy, the world turns upside down.

“Do you have any idea where they might be?” John finally asks. Scott can’t help but notice that he looks like he's aged a decade in the last few months. 

“No,” Scott says. “But I'm going to find them. I _have_ to find them.” He doesn't know if he's saying it for the sheriff's benefit, or for his own.

“I'll put an APB out for Derek, say that he's a person of interest in one of our investigations. I'll let the surrounding counties know too. If they've been gone since this morning, they could have made it out of the state by now. We'll need a doctor's note for the school. I'll say Stiles has mono or something.”

“My mom will sign it,” Scott says. “I just need to let her know what's going on.” 

“Let me handle it,” John sighs, standing up from behind his desk. “I may not be able to find their scent or whatever it is you two can do, but I can handle this end. Please, just find my son.” 

“I will. I promise.” 

They head back to the loft, but it's impossible to follow Derek and Stiles’ trail; it only leads from the loft down to the parking lot before it disappears again, presumably cut off by the two of them hopping into Derek’s car. 

Following his nose may be useless, but there’s something else Scott can do. At the very least, it’s something he can _try._

By the time he reaches the preserve, night has fallen. The woods are quieter than usual, like even the animals know that something has happened and decided to vacate the premises. The first place he goes is the Hale family homestead. He has no idea how the thing is still standing; in addition to the timbers being scorched from the fire that decimated Derek's family, it's also riddled with bullet holes. It looks like a strong gust of wind would send it crumbling like a house of cards. 

In addition to being structurally unsound, it's completely empty, just as Scott expected. Holing up in Derek's old home would have been too simple of a solution, and even though Scott knows almost nothing about the _thing_ possessing his best friend, he has a feeling that it isn't going to make things easy for them.

After that, there's only one other place he can think to go: the cliff that overlooks the entire town. 

Crouched on the edge of the drop, overlooking the thousands of lights twinkling in the valley below like fireflies, Scott opens his mouth and _howls_. He pulls it from the bottom of his lungs, uses every ounce of alpha power that he can muster, hoping to God that Derek will hear him and howl back. It's a last grasp for an easy solution. 

He waits five minutes and nothing happens. He receives no answering howl, no acknowledgment that his efforts have been heard. He groans out of sheer frustration, holding his head in his hands.

“Damn it,” he whispers, “where _are_ you?”


	3. i, iii: Derek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the length of this chapter! the next one is back to a more normal length and will be posted soon.

Derek jolts awake to the sound of howling.

He can’t pinpoint how far away the howl is; it’s faint, but it resonates with power. It’s distinctly that of an alpha, and since the remnants of Deucalion’s pack were killed or left town months ago, there’s only one person that it can be. 

Scott. 

His inner wolf demands that he howl back, that he answer the call, but before he can so much as peel his lips away from his teeth, a cold, clammy hand wraps around his throat from behind and slams over his mouth.

“I wouldn't answer that if I were you.” The voice has only a cursory resemblance to Stiles’. While Derek knows all too well that Stiles is annoying, downright infuriating at times, he isn’t usually intentionally _cruel_ , and the voice brushing against his ear, sharp like one of the Argent’s daggers, outright oozes with malice. “I mean, you could if you _really_ wanted to, but I'm sure you wouldn't like what would happen to Stiles if you did.”

“Where are we?” Derek asks, words muffled by the long-fingered hand still pressed over his mouth. He’s sitting in a rickety wooden chair that creaks whenever he shifts his weight. The room is dark, lit only by rays of moonlight peeking through the gaps in the thin curtains covering the window on his right. He doesn’t allow himself to linger on any one spot; he flits his eyes from corner to corner, trying to soak in as many details as possible. For all intents and purposes, the place looks like a room from any of a thousand anonymous motels spread across the country. There’s a double bed directly across from him, stripped of its bedding, the mattress covered in a dark stain. The sheets and blankets are strewn across the carpeted floor like tarps, marred with rips and tears. On Derek’s right, a closed door leads into what he presumes is a bathroom. The air in the room is stale, like it’s been closed up for days. It reeks of blood, sweat, and dirt, and he nearly chokes on his next inhale. 

Before he can pick out any more details, the thing wearing Stiles' body comes around to stand in front of him, chuckling softly all the while. 

“It's not time for questions yet,” the thing murmurs, fingertips biting into the flesh of Derek's cheek. “Actually, it wasn't supposed to be time for anything yet. You're supposed to be asleep.” Before Derek can talk, the thing leans in and presses Stiles’ lips to Derek’s mouth hard enough to wrench his head back against the chair. 

In the seconds that pass before Derek loses consciousness again, his mouth fills with the taste of sour, rotten dirt.


	4. i, iv: Scott

When Scott gets back to the loft, the place is packed. Deaton, Allison and Lydia are crowded around the table, working in silence; Deaton and Lydia have thick books in front of them and are scrawling notes on pieces of paper, while Allison has her laptop open with the USB key containing the bestiary plugged into the side. On the other side of the room are Isaac, the sheriff, Scott's mom and, unfortunately, Peter Hale. There are two air mattresses on the floor; one of them is plugged into the wall and inflating with a quiet buzz while Isaac is inflating the other, leaning against a pillar and pressing his foot up and down on the manual pump whilst also managing to glare at Peter with his arms crossed over his chest.

It's an impressive display of multitasking, Scott has to admit, and he can't fault Isaac for glaring at Peter. Just being around him makes Scott shudder, and the wolf starts growling steadily in the back of his mind. 

“Mom, what are you doing here? I thought you had to work,” he says, bypassing the Peter problem for the time being. 

“I'm on my dinner break. John is going to drive me back to the hospital in a few minutes, but I figured that you guys could use something to sleep on if you're going to be staying here all night.” Truth be told, Scott hadn't even thought about the very act of sleeping, let alone where he was going to do it, but now that his mom has brought it up, sleeping at the loft seems like the right thing to do. In addition to keeping them close to the scene of the crime, it keeps them all together. It means they can more easily protect each other. 

“Okay,” he replies, pulling her into a tight hug. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Please keep me in the loop. Let me know if there's anything else you need.” She presses a kiss to his forehead and says bye to the others before she leaves with the sheriff. Isaac is still working the foot pump, but Scott is pretty sure he's not paying any attention to it; the mattress looks like it might pop if it inflates any further. 

“Isaac, I think it's good,” he says. Isaac jumps slightly, and his eyes finally rip away from Peter. 

“Right,” he mutters, crouching down to remove the pump and seal the mattress. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.” Scott crouches down beside him as well and lowers his voice as much as he possibly can, nearly speaking right into Isaac's ear, although he’s sure that Peter will be able to hear him anyways. “Are you okay staying here? If you'd rather be at my house, we can go back there.” Isaac stays still for a moment, heartbeat thunderously loud in Scott's ears. Finally, he nods.

“I'll be okay,” he says quietly. “I think your house might be too small for all of us to fit in. But can we get that asshole out of here?” 

“I'll try to get him to leave,” Scott says. “Can you get some pillows from upstairs?” He waits until Isaac has disappeared up the spiral staircase before he gets up to talk to Peter, who is leaning against another pillar, watching the research process without offering to help in any way, shape or form. 

“Why are you here?” he asks, rolling his eyes when Peter smirks.

“Can't I help find my nephew without it being suspicious?” 

“No.” Frankly, Scott finds it a little insulting that Peter would even ask such a stupid question. 

“Well, you kind of need my permission to use the loft-”

“No, we don't,” Isaac says, coming back down the stairs, nearly hidden under the mound of bedding in his arms. “Derek likes us better than you.”

“You don't know that,” Peter retorts. 

“Yeah, I do. If Derek liked you better, why did he give Stiles a key and not you?”

“What?” Scott whips around to face Isaac. “Derek gave Stiles a key?” 

“Yeah,” Isaac shrugs nonchalantly. “I saw it on his key ring a few weeks ago. Recognized it because I have the same one.” The fact throws Scott for a loop. He knows that Stiles and Derek have been getting closer over the last few months, but only in small increments; they've gone from hissing threats at each other to smartass remarks to rolled eyes and muttered comments. All things considered, it’s not really much of a progression, and it definitely doesn't seem like a level of progress that would earn Stiles a key. 

“I'll level with you,” Peter says before Scott can articulate any of these thoughts aloud. “I know a little about these things. If this spirit has possessed Derek, then I have a feeling that I might be a target.”

“Why would it want to come after you?” Deaton asks, not looking up from the book he's studying. 

“Talia used to tell us stories of a thing with no real name that was all sorts of bad news. I never knew if any of what she said was true, or if it was all rumors and fairy tales, but she said that these beings latched onto the darkest thoughts you'd ever had. Even if it was something you'd only thought about once, it’d commit the act that you'd thought of, just to leech off the negative energy and chaos.”

“So why does that make you a target?” Isaac asks, sitting on the edge of one of the air mattresses with his hands clasped between his knees. 

“Come on Isaac, you _have_ to be smarter than that,” Peter groans, and Scott takes a step towards him, a surge of protectiveness running through him.

“Peter, quit screwing around and tell us what the hell you're talking about,” he snaps, voice slipping into a near-growl. For a brief moment, Peter's visage actually changes. He actually looks _nervous_ , and Scott carefully catalogs the moment; it's definitely something to be proud of. Only seconds later, Peter shakes his head and his same bored smirk comes back, but it's not nearly as disarming or annoying now that Scott has seen what is really below the surface. 

“Seriously, who in this room _hasn't_ thought about killing me at some point or another?” Peter asks. Unsurprisingly, not one of them speaks up. Even Deaton stays quiet. "That's what I'm talking about. I know for a fact that Stiles has had those exact same thoughts. As for Derek... well, Laura always _was_ his favorite. I’m sure he still wants to avenge her.”

“Well, why shouldn't we let him do it?” Lydia's voice is cold and sharp as flint, and when Scott looks over, he sees that her eyes are much the same. “If you _are_ a target, why shouldn't we just let him kill you?”

“Because there's no saying who else might be on that little demonic hit list of his,” Peter drawls, smirk growing even wider. “Do you really want any more blood on your hands, sweetheart? Have you even finished washing off the last bunch of bodies you found? Do you even-”

With only a brief whistling sound as warning, a dagger buries itself into the pillar right beside Peter's face, a mere inch away from his ear. When Scott looks back at the table, Allison is casually flipping another dagger between her fingers. 

“You missed,” Peter says, eyes flicking sideways at the still quivering blade embedded in the pillar. 

“No, I didn't.” She flashes a closed-mouth smile at him, and it's easily one of the most terrifying things Scott has ever seen. Crossing the room, he yanks the dagger out of the wall and tucks it into his pocket, hoping that it won't breach the fabric of his jeans and stab him. 

“I'd listen to her if I were you,” he says slowly, vision shifting to red, fangs a solid pressure against his gums. “If you're a target, we'll try to keep you alive. But until then, unless you actually have something solid that can help us find Derek and Stiles, stay out of our way.” He has a feeling that Peter isn't going to listen to him, that he's going to insist on staying, which will inevitably lead to even more conflict that Scott really doesn't feel like dealing with at the moment. But, after a few long seconds of Peter staring at him with his eyes blazing electric blue, he finally steps away from the pillar and towards the door. He doesn't say a single word as he exits, but it's only when his footsteps completely fade that Scott dares breathe again, sighing and closing his eyes as his vision shifts back to normal. 

He thinks the happiest day of his life will be when Peter Hale leaves town for good.

&.

Deaton leaves the loft just before midnight, taking some of the texts with him so that he can consult with some of his contacts about some information. Allison and Lydia are fast asleep on one of the air mattresses, buried under a mound of blankets. Stiles’ father has acquired a doctor's note for Stiles, and the girls have agreed to do his homework in order to perpetuate the lie that he's sick.

(At first, Scott had been worried about the idea, not because he doubted their intelligence but because Stiles' handwriting was kind of unique; it alternated between messy and easy to read, between skeletal printing and random sections of elaborate cursive. When he'd voiced that concern out loud, Lydia had simply rolled her eyes, grabbed a scrap piece of paper and scribbled out a few sentences. Allison had done the same, and the end result was remarkably convincing. 

He has no idea how the two of them are so good at forging, but he figures that learning the answer would probably just scare him). 

He's exhausted. The morning's lacrosse practice seems like it was an eternity ago, and with each minute that goes by, the other air mattress looks more and more inviting. But before he can let himself grab a few hours of what he's sure will be an uneasy sleep, there are some more people he needs to contact, people that he's been putting off. 

When he steps outside, Isaac is sitting on the ledge of Derek's balcony, apparently unperturbed that there's nothing but fifteen stories of empty air between his feet and the ground. The moon is barely visible, dim beneath a shroud of mist and smog. The air is clear, with just a touch of chill that brings tiny goosebumps to Scott's bare arms; if they were under any other circumstances, it would be a good night for a run through the preserve. 

He's been to Derek's loft a number of times, but he's never actually seen the view from the balcony. It isn't the most impressive sight in the world; it’s mainly comprised of other apartment buildings and warehouses, all in various forms in reparation. Some of the streetlights on the surrounding thoroughfares are blown out, leaving parts of the landscape shrouded in shadow. Down below, a single car passes by and Scott can hear the police scanner in it, hears one of the sheriff's deputies answering the radio as the vehicle disappears from sight. 

“Aren't you afraid of falling?” he asks, leaning against the ledge beside Isaac. 

“Not really,” Isaac shrugs. “Heights have never bothered me. Didn't seem that scary, compared to...” He trails off, and Scott can't help but feel guilty. Thinking about Isaac's past never fails to make him upset with himself. He’d seen the bruises on Isaac's face, seen the abrasions on his chest and back while they were changing for lacrosse. He'd seen them and paid no mind because back in those days, Isaac had been no more than a cursory blip on his radar, someone he occasionally nodded at in the halls, someone he only spoke to if it involved lacrosse. He'd been so wrapped up in his own problems (trivial as some of them were) that he'd seen the obvious and never even thought about it. 

“I'm sorry,” Scott says. “I didn't mean to bring it up.”

“You didn't,” Isaac replies. “I did.” He turns his head and smiles slightly, in a self-deprecating way, and it's so sad and frustrating that Scott almost says _I'm sorry_ again. 

Instead, he returns the smile the best he can and moves a little closer, returning his gaze back out to the city. 

“Do you think we should tell Erica and Boyd?” he asks softly, finally getting around to what he originally came outside for. After the business with the alpha pack was cleared up, they’d stuck to the decision they'd made before things with the kanima and Jackson had even really come to an end; they left town to find another pack. Although Scott has kept in sporadic contact with them, he doesn’t know if they’ve actually talked to Derek since they left. 

He’s not comfortable making the decision about whether or not to contact them on his own. While he truly believes that they have a right to know, he doesn’t exactly know how they feel about Derek. Even though he considered them to be his friends, he’d never been as close to them as Isaac had. 

“Yeah,” Isaac replies, throat bobbing like he's swallowing past a lump. “I think they'll want to know. I already sent Cora a text. She hasn't answered yet, but you know her. By the time she finally checks her phone, we might have found them.”

“Probably,” Scott laughs, the sound so artificial that he can't help but wince. “I hope so.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and takes a few moments, trying to figure out how best to send the message. His first instinct is to send a text, but after only a few seconds of consideration, he rules it out. He's pretty sure that Derek's disappearance qualifies as important enough for a phone call, regardless of how late it is. He puts the phone on speaker and dials Erica's number. At the very least, if she doesn't answer, he can leave a voice mail. 

After only three rings, the line clicks and Erica's voice comes through, slightly crackly like she's somewhere without great reception.

“Hi Scott! I'm surprised you're still awake. Don't true alphas need their beauty sleep?” she says. Although only a few months ago the remark may have been a sharp-edged barb, it's devolved into something resembling good-natured teasing. Normally, he would respond with a joke of his own but unfortunately, it's not the time for that. 

“Hey, Erica. Is Boyd with you?” 

“Yeah, he's right here, hold on.” After a series of shuffling noises, the quality of the call changes again, and Boyd's rumbling voice speaks up. 

“Hey, Scott.”

“You obviously didn't call us to flirt,” Erica interjects before Scott can return the greeting. “What's going on? Has something happened?”

“Yeah,” Scott says, taking a moment to get his thoughts straight. No matter how many times he says the words, it doesn’t get any easier to deliver the news. “It's Derek and Stiles. They're gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” Boyd asks. “They just disappeared?” 

“Yeah, and not the fun 'they disappeared on their honeymoon' kind of gone,” Isaac inputs, turning himself so that he’s straddling the ledge. “More like the, 'Stiles is possessed by some fucking spirit that we know absolutely nothing about and he managed to take Derek with him' kind of gone.” For a few moments, there's only silence on the other end of the line, and when Erica speaks again, the confidence and bravado she usually projects is gone. 

“You're actually serious,” she says slowly. “How did that happen?”

“We don’t really know,” Scott sighs. “Deaton thinks that Stiles was trying to do a ritual to protect us all and wore himself too thin. He made a mistake, summoned some kind of spirit that targets emissaries. But that's just a guess for now. We have no idea where he's gone with Derek.” 

“Do you need us to come?” Boyd asks. “We're only a few hours away. We can be there by morning.”

“We can leave right now,” Erica adds. “We just have to let the others know.”

“No, don't worry about it,” Scott hurriedly says. It's not that he doesn't appreciate their offer, but he doesn't want to expose any more of his friends to danger, if he can avoid it. “Just... keep an eye out, okay? If you hear or see anything, let me know, but be careful. We don't know anything about this thing. We don't know what it's capable of. Watch your backs.”

“We've never stopped doing that,” Erica says. “We'll let the rest of our pack know. If we hear anything, we'll call you.” 

“Okay. I'll keep you both in the loop.” Scott hangs up and sighs, tucking his phone back in his pocket before reaching up to rub at his sore eyes. It's late and they have school in the morning; as much as Scott doesn't want to go, they have to try and keep up appearances. They managed to keep the existence of the alpha pack and the darach hidden from the rest of town; they can keep this hidden too. 

“I guess we should try to get some sleep,” he sighs, taking one last look out at the dark landscape of the city. Isaac nods and hops off the ledge. As soon as both his feet are back on the ground, Scott lets out a relieved sigh. 

“Yeah, I guess so. Don't know if we'll have much luck,” Isaac says, scrubbing a hand through his curls, which are starting to grow out and fall across his forehead. “Did you want the air mattress to yourself?” Isaac continues, throwing the words back over his shoulder as he walks back inside. “I can sleep upstairs. There's still an extra mattress on the floor.” 

“Why would I want that?” Scott asks, genuinely confused. If it would make Isaac uncomfortable to sleep beside him, he's not going to push, but truth be told, he wants to stay close to him, stay close to all of his friends. Sure, upstairs isn't far away but it’s enough of a barrier for him to feel worried about the distance. “There should be enough room for both of us.”

“Okay,” Isaac hurriedly replies, flicking the switch that turns off the dim lights. Even with them off, the bank of windows gives Scott more than enough light to see by. 

There's a knapsack at the head of the air mattress and from within it, Isaac pulls out two pairs of pajama pants, one of which he throws at Scott. As soon as Isaac's fingers reach for his belt, Scott turns towards the bank of windows and starts changing as well. When he turns back around, Isaac is underneath the blankets. His fingers are interlaced behind his head, and he's staring up at the vaulted glass ceiling above. One pane is much cleaner than the others, fairly unblemished by dust and dirt, and Scott quickly averts his own gaze from it, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. 

No matter how hard he tries to forget, it seems like there's always something reminding him of Jennifer, of the alpha pack and the human sacrifices. 

He slides under the blankets and permits himself a single moment of relaxation. But then the corner of his phone (which he transferred to the pocket of his pajama pants) pokes him in the thigh, and he pulls it out, bringing Stiles' chat log up on the screen. It's been nearly six hours since he last sent a desperate text, longer since he tried calling and had to listen to it ring and ring and ring and finally click over to voicemail. 

“Should I try again?” he asks quietly. Beside him, Isaac turns his head, and maybe Scott overestimated how big the mattress was, because Isaac is actually very close to him, so close that Scott can feel his toes brushing against his ankle when he shifts. 

“Would it help you sleep if you tried again?” Scott nods and, even in the dark, he can track the long line of Isaac's throat as it bobs. “Then do it.” It's the affirmation he needed; Scott presses _call_ and even though he expects nothing more than a dial tone, he can't help but hope.

At this point, it's all he _can_ do.

“C'mon, Stiles,” he murmurs. “Please pick up.”


	5. i, v: Stiles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you have emetophobia, there's some paragraphs in this chapter that you may want to skip. more detail on that is in the end notes.

Stiles wakes up with a scream dying in his throat. 

A massive black expanse of sky, dotted with tiny pinprick stars, stretches out above him like a ribbon. The air is fresh, clean, a far cry from the damn rotten smell that's been plaguing him for days. His shaking limbs are resting on something soft, and he slowly places his palms on the ground, not daring to make any sudden movements. It feels like nothing scarier than normal grass beneath his fingertips and, cautiously, he turns his head, winces at how stiff his neck is, and tries to get a better view of his surroundings. 

He's in a clearing; the nearest trees are at least ten feet away, packed together so densely that it’s impossible to see anything between them. It doesn't look like a familiar clearing, but nonetheless, whether it's the texture of the ground underneath him or the smell in the air, it feels like the preserve, and that feeling is enough to make the panicked shuddering coursing through his body ebb away. 

But how did he get here? He can't remember where he was or what he was doing before he woke up; it's like a chunk of his memory has been neatly snipped away. 

It’s not the first time this has happened. He’s been burning the candle at both ends for months, trying desperately to balance his schoolwork and his emissary duties. He's spent so many nights trying to stay awake just a little longer, read just another page, and all too often, when his alarm ripped him out of an uneasy sleep, he was still at his desk or on the floor, face shoved into an ancient volume of spells. 

For the past two weeks, he's been sleepwalking. He remembers that. It had started out small; the first few nights, he'd woken up downstairs on the couch or slumped over the kitchen table. 

But then he'd woken up in his backyard. And in front of the school. And standing on the sidewalk in front of Scott's house at four in the morning, bare feet pressed to the cold concrete, fingernails biting into his palm. 

And then he’d woken up behind the wheel of his Jeep, neatly parked on a residential street with the morning sun blazing through the windshield. He can remember the panic that had coursed through him, growing steadily day by day, panic because he couldn't just attribute everything to the Nemeton, because something _else_ had to be happening. 

Derek's. He remembers driving to Derek's because he was sure that Derek would know something, would have some insight into what was happening to him, and because he hadn't wanted to worry Scott; Scott already spent almost all of his time worrying, Stiles saw it in his face every day. Besides, he had a key for the loft. He's had a key since-

Since when? He can’t remember. Why did Derek give him a key? When did they have that conversation? _Why can’t he remember what happened where is he why can he see the stars but not the moon-_

He runs through the woods. His feet are bare, covered in dirt and pieces of leaves, ripped and torn by the small pebbles and twigs that he keeps stepping on. But as much as it hurts, he has to keep running. There’s something going on, something he can’t even begin to understand because his brain isn’t working properly. He can’t _think_ , but at the very least, he can run. 

He runs and runs, stumbles around trees, occasionally sprawls over roots that jut from the uneven ground like twisted claws. Somewhere along the way, he rips the knees of his jeans open, and when he gently probes at the area, his fingertips come back soaked with blood. Based on the sheer amount flooding down his legs, he should be in agony, shouldn't even be able to walk. 

But all he feels is a dull throb, like a headache. 

He keeps running. He screams until his throat feels shredded, screams for help, screams so that someone can find him. 

But he has a pervasive feeling that, even though he can hear the words leaving his mouth, he isn’t actually making a sound. 

It feels like he's been running for days when he hears something; a noise that isn’t his own labored breathing or footsteps or screams. It’s coming from nowhere in particular and yet it’s everywhere at once, echoing all around him. It sounds like music, some tune that makes a spark of recognition go off in the back of his mind, but he can’t put a name to it. Even if it’s luring him into danger, he has to investigate it; it’s the only sign that he isn’t alone here, that he isn’t just imagining his surroundings. 

So he keeps running.

Finally, after hours upon hours of running uselessly, stumbling blindly like a drunkard past thousands of identical trees, the noise spikes in volume. He can pick out individual notes now, can hear an identifiable rhythm that hadn't existed before. Abruptly, the noise stops echoing; it’s coming from directly in front of him now, and when he looks in that direction, he realizes that the trees have simply stopped. Instead, there’s a black hole, like the mouth of a cave, beckoning him. He's seen caves like this in storybooks when he was younger; in those stories, the caves always contained monsters, bears or tigers or other creatures waiting to rip you apart and suck the marrow from your bones.

But he has a feeling that it’s the forest behind him that contains the monster. Maybe the forest _is_ the monster. 

So he runs forward into the darkness. It’s nothing less than pure, the absence of all light and sensation. There’s no feeling beneath his feet, just emptiness that extends to eternity. He can’t see a thing, can’t feel his own limbs, isn’t even sure if his body still exists. He's heard about near-death experiences before, read some theories that said that even if separated from the body, the brain could continue to live on. 

Is that what’s happening to him? If that’s the case, _why can he still hear that fucking noise-_

There’s light. More than light, there’s a _room_ , with furniture and curtains and a thin carpet beneath his still bare toes. He blinks heavily and whips around. 

Where did the cave go? Where the fuck is he? 

Why can he still hear that damn _noise_?

When Stiles whips around again, he spots the source of the noise, sitting on a low table next to a dead-bolted door. 

While the sound is more coherent now, its scope has shrunk down into something tinny, the notes of the Imperial March being piped out of the shitty speaker on his cell phone. He lunges for the phone and quickly presses the _answer_ button.

It’s only as he brings the phone up to his ear that he realizes his fingertips are soaked in still-damp blood.

“Hello?” he stammers. Between his slick fingers and the way his arm is shaking more and more with every moment that goes by, holding onto the phone is nearly impossible. “Who is this?”

“Stiles? Oh my God, is that actually you?”

“Scott?” His head is spinning rapidly, and he slumps back against the table and closes his eyes. “Oh God, Scott. What's happening to me?” 

“Where are you?” 

“I don't know,” Stiles groans. In addition to the dizziness and the shaking, every second that passes seems to bring more pain. It feels like he's repeatedly stepped on something sharp, and the knees of his jeans are shredded. With every movement he makes, he feels the remaining fabric stick to his flesh, like it's been glued there. “I don't know, Scott. I remember going to Derek's.”

“Okay, good, that's good, we're there now,” Scott says. Stiles hears someone murmuring behind him, someone who might be Isaac. “What do you see now? Are you inside somewhere?” Stiles takes a moment to take a few deep breaths, hoping that it'll stop the nausea churning in his stomach. When he opens his eyes again, some of the dizziness and nausea seems to have abated. 

The relief only lasts until he gets a good glimpse at his surroundings.

“Oh my God,” he whimpers and just like that, his knees don't so much give out as they _melt_ , sending him to the floor in a heap. “Oh my God, Scott, you've gotta help me, I think I-” 

“Stiles, what's happening?” Stiles hears Scott speaking in his ear, but he's only vaguely aware of it, too transfixed on the sight in front of him. He slowly starts shuffling forward on his knees and one hand, the other still holding the phone, the taste of vomit thick in the back of his throat. Each step forward sends screeching pain through his injured knees. 

On any other day, Stiles is sure that the bed would be completely unremarkable; it's average size, probably a queen, probably uncomfortable as hell. The bedspread is likely something flowery or pastel, something completely inoffensive for anyone who might be sleeping in it, and the pillows are likely flat and bland and absolutely nothing like the one he needs to sleep at night. 

It’s no longer unremarkable.

It’s covered in blood. The pillows, the blankets, the carpet around it; all of it is soaked in crimson, like a rogue avant-garde artist has been put in charge of decorating the place. 

And in the midst of it all is Derek.

He's sprawled across the left side of the bed, and although he's shirtless (a sight Stiles might appreciate at any other time), there’s blood is all over him too, streaks crisscrossing his torso like a gruesome spider web. His arm is dangling off the edge of the mattress in a position that looks entirely comfortable, and when Stiles reaches out for it, his fingers are shaking so damn much that he's seeing double of them.

“Stiles? Stiles, please, what's happening?” Scott asks, sounding like he's on the verge of hyperventilating. Stiles shakes his head hard, trying to return some semblance of order to his brain. 

It doesn't work. 

The inside of his mouth tastes awful, like he's been sucking on dirty, rusted metal. When he finally brushes his fingers over Derek's wrist, he has to bite back bile as well. He can't be certain, but he doesn't think that Derek has a pulse. 

“Oh God,” he whispers, hot tears boiling down his face. “Oh God, Scott, I think he's dead, fuck, I think Derek's dead, he's not breathing.” He gets to his feet, takes a step backwards and immediately falls back to the carpet, dropping his phone in the process. He knows that he should be examining Derek's body further, should be trying to calm down, but he _can't_. There's pain coursing through every inch of his body and when he looks down, not only are the knees of his jeans ripped open, but he can see barely an inch of his exposed skin peeking through still-red blood. He fumbles his phone back into his hand and keeps backing up, inch by inch like a crab, trying to get to the bathroom before he inevitably throws up.

“Scott, I don't know where I am,” he says, thankful when the rough carpet of the room gives way to cool tile beneath his hands. “There's so much blood, it's all over me, it's all over the bed, I...” That's the last straw; tossing his phone to the side, he clambers to his knees and drapes himself across the toilet, throwing up. It should make the roiling nausea in his stomach go away but if anything, it only makes him feel worse. There's a rhythmic pounding in his head, throbbing at his temples hard enough to make his eyes water, worse than anything he's ever felt. He can hear Scott's voice still coming out of the speaker and he grabs his phone again, wiping at his mouth with the sleeve of his sweater. 

“Stiles, we're going to come get you,” Scott says. “I promise, we're going to find you.”

“What's happening to me?” he whimpers, blood gurgling from between his lips. His body feels boneless, but once he manages to throw his arm into the sink, it gives him enough leverage to pull himself up onto legs that threaten to spill him right back down to the tiles. He finds the light switch beside the sink and when he flicks it on, the florescent light makes his headache spike and his eyes water. 

Once his vision clears again, he reaches for the faucet, hoping that water will clear out his mouth so that he actually talk again.

His fingers don't reach the tap. 

He sees his reflection first. 

“No,” he chokes, his throat tightening more and more with each second. “Oh fuck, no, Scott, oh my God, how did that happen, I'm going to die-”

“Stiles, what's going on?” Stiles knows that Scott is talking to him but... no, he doesn't know. He can't be talking to him. Scott _can't_ be talking to him, because there is no possible way that any of this is real. It has to be a dream, one very long, very complex, fucked up dream, probably brought on by swallowing too many emissary herbs and spices. He sets his phone on the edge of the sink and holds his fingers up in front of his face, trying desperately to ignore his reflection, bringing his hands so close that they're nearly touching his face.

“One,” he chokes out, twitching his left thumb just the slightest. “Two, three, four...” Even with his hands shaking, he manages to continue until he reaches his right thumb, the tenth finger. 

Ten. Even number, divisible by zero, one, two, five and itself. Any other time, it would be a good number, a fucking _great_ number; it would be hard, solid fact that he's back to reality, no longer in the tormented fucking world of his nightmares. 

But now, ten is awful. He'd prefer eleven or thirteen or even fucking twenty, anything but ten, because ten means this is _real_ and if this is real, that means-

With shaking hands, he picks up his phone again. 

“Ten,” he whimpers. “Ten, Scott, fucking ten, I...” He trails off into a sob so powerful it nearly gags him. When he opens his mouth to talk again, no words come out. Instead, his mouth abruptly fills with the taste of mud and seconds later, damp dirt starts pouring from his lips, tumbling down his chin and into the sink. When Stiles tries to breathe in through his nose, it fills up as well, until the pressure behind his eyes is so extreme that he thinks they’re going to pop out and onto his cheeks.

He forgets about what led him to scream in the first place. 

His phone slips out of his hand once and for all, and the shattering of his screen when it hits the ground seems a thousand miles away. Stiles hits the ground only seconds later, dirt still spewing from his mouth, spraying across the tiles to mix in with the slick red liquid that's already there. 

Blood. There's so much blood and all of it is _real._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you want to skip over the scenes referenced in the beginning notes: 
> 
> Stop reading at _"That's the last straw"_ and start up again at _“Stiles, we're going to come get you.”_
> 
> Stop reading at _When he opens his mouth to talk again, no words come out._ and skip to the last line of the chapter.


	6. i, vi: Scott

“Stiles? _Stiles!_ ” Scott knows he's screaming loud enough to probably wake up everyone on the block, but he can't stop himself. The last words that had come from Stiles' mouth were only coherent in the most technical sense of the term; they'd been perfectly understandable, but they hadn't made any sense. 

What was _ten_ supposed to mean? 

The noises after that had been even more frightening. Stiles had sobbed, like he was ripping his heart out with his bare hands, but that quickly dissolved into cut-off gagging noises, like he was being violently choked. 

Now, Stiles’ end of the line is completely silent, and when Scott tears his phone away from his face, he realizes that's because the call has been disconnected. His next move is completely impulsive; he attempts to throw his phone across the room but, quick as a whip, Isaac snatches it out of midair and drops it onto the mattress. Allison and Lydia have woken up, and between them and Isaac, the sound of racing heartbeats is deafening; ordinarily, Scott would be able to block them out, but he's currently on the verge of falling into a full-blown panic attack, so he bolts for the balcony, so that he can try to catch his breath. 

Then again, if he just heard his best friend die, he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to breathe again. 

Once he's outside, he slumps to the cold concrete and presses his forehead to the ground. He can still hear everyone's heartbeats, but it's more manageable now that he's outside. The only thing he can smell is dirt, and he inhales deeply, uses the smell to keep himself grounded. Once his own heartbeat has dropped down to something more resembling normalcy, he allows himself to start sorting through his thoughts.

He knows that something horrible just happened to Stiles, but that doesn't _necessarily_ mean that he's dead. Derek had once told him that losing a member of your pack felt like having one of your limbs torn off, and Scott hasn’t felt anything quite like that yet. 

Which means that Stiles is still alive. He has to be. 

Derek, on the other hand, might be a different story, if Stiles’ panicked words are anything to go off. 

He feels like he’s going to throw up. 

“Scott?” Isaac's voice sounds like it's coming through layers and layers of gauze. “Are you okay?” Scott swallows and presses his fingers into the unyielding concrete. 

“He sounded so damn scared,” he says quietly, eyes focused on a speck of grime staining the ground. “He sounded _terrified_ , Isaac.” 

“I know,” Isaac says quietly. “I've never heard anyone sound that scared before.”

“Me neither.” Slowly, Scott sits up and leans back against the railing. On the other side of the glass, he can see Allison and Lydia sitting on their air mattress; he can hear the low murmurs of their voices, but he doesn't try to pick out specific words. Isaac is standing in the doorway leading back inside, both feet still firmly planted inside the loft. It's a behavior Scott has picked up on before; Isaac usually pauses before entering a room, like he's gauging the mood, ready to duck out at a moment's notice. He nods and jerks his head slightly, indicating that it's okay for Isaac to come closer. Isaac shoots him a quick, closed-mouth smile and sits down beside him, hands in his lap and long legs stretched in front of him. His heartbeat is still loud, but it’s quieted a little, dropped into something that Scott can handle. 

“He said Derek was dead,” Isaac says after a few long moments of silence. “Do you think-”

“I don't know,” Scott interrupts. He doesn't see so much as feel Isaac's slight flinch, and guilt momentarily sours his mouth. “But we might be able to find them now.” 

“You think so?” 

“Yeah. We've done it before. Traced a cell phone number back to a location.” 

“Really?” Isaac asks, one eyebrow raised. “I thought you were good, upstanding citizens.”

“It was Stiles' idea,” Scott replies, and Isaac barks out a laugh. “But _we_ weren't the ones who did it. It was Danny. I don't know if he'll be willing to do it again.” 

“I'm sure we can convince him. But there's no point in thinking about it now,” Isaac says. “We need to get some sleep.” 

“I know.” They’re sitting close enough for Scott to drop his head against Isaac's shoulder. He’s always been a tactile person, even before the bite; that just exacerbated an already present tendency. Isaac momentarily stiffens underneath him, but he relaxes just as quickly and scoots a little closer. 

“I'm glad that you're here,” Scott says quietly. “I know you and Stiles don't get along, and there's all that stuff between you and Derek, so I would have understood if you didn’t want to get involved.” 

“I'm not doing it for them,” Isaac replies. “I mean, I'm sick of people dying, just as much as you are. But...” He trails off and drops his head on top of Scott's. Minutes pass before he adds, “I'm not going anywhere. Not this time.”

“Good,” Scott whispers, letting his eyes close for what he means to be a few minutes.

When his eyes flutter open again, he's still out on the balcony. The air is cool and his neck is sore, presumably because his head has been sandwiched between Isaac's shoulder and his cheek for the last few hours. 

He’s not sure if he’s late for school and, for the time being, he has more pressing issues to handle, because Cora Hale is crouched in front him, hands fisted in the front of his shirt, giving him what is one of the most terrifying looks Scott has ever witnessed. 

“Where the _fuck_ is my brother?” she growls. 

Apparently, she's gotten significantly better at checking her phone.

Scott manages to wait until they’re back in the now-empty loft before he explains the situation. She takes the news just as well as Scott expected. When Isaac says something sarcastic, Cora grabs him by the neck and shoves him against the nearest pillar. 

“Shut your mouth,” she growls through her fangs before turning back to Scott, hand still firmly wrapped around Isaac's neck. “Do you know anything about where they are? Can't you smell something?” 

“I know someone who might be able to figure out where they were last night,” he replies. “I just need to talk to him. If he can give us a location, we might be able to pick up their scent from there.” 

“You'd better hope that he gives you something,” she snaps, letting go of Isaac. To his credit, Isaac doesn't try to play things cool; he simply slumps against the pillar and rubs his visibly bruised neck. “If Derek is actually dead, if _Stiles_ actually killed him, I will rip his damn throat out, possessed or not. Got it?” 

“Got it.”

&.

They make it to school three periods late. When they stumble into chemistry, Danny looks up, raises an eyebrow and looks back down, only to raise it again when they sit down directly behind him instead of taking their usual seats on the other side of the room.

“Where have you two been all morning?” he asks. “And why are you sitting here?”

“Did you actually miss us?” Isaac asks with a slight smirk, and Scott deliberately nudges him with his elbow below the line of the table. 

“We have a favor to ask,” Scott says. Immediately, Danny's face goes blank, and he spins back around to face the front of the room.

“Nope,” he says firmly, writing down the date in his notebook. “Not happening. Your favors are always illegal.”

“But you always do them.”

“Only because Stiles won't _shut up_ about them,” Danny hisses. 

“Danny, this is actually important,” Scott insists, leaning forward until he’s almost peering over Danny’s shoulder. “Really important. You're the only one I know who can help.” Danny stays quiet for a few more moments, and Scott crosses his fingers. Something taps the back of his hand and when he looks down, he realizes that Isaac has crossed his fingers as well. 

“Does this have something to do with Stiles not being here?” Danny finally says. Scott just gapes for a few moments. There's no point in asking _how_ Danny knows, but there's also no point in lying.

However, he _also_ doesn't have to tell the whole truth.

“Yeah,” Isaac says, leaning over on Danny's other side. “He took off with Derek, and the sheriff is _pissed_.”

“Can't say I'm surprised,” Danny laughs, and Scott doesn't even want to try and sort out the implications in that answer. “But can't his deputies do something about it?”

“Well, yeah, but there's no point in getting them involved,” Scott shrugs, exchanging a look with Isaac behind Danny's back. “Not if we can find him first. Save everyone a lot of trouble.” Their teacher chooses that moment to enter the classroom, and just as Scott thinks his efforts might be for naught, Danny groans and looks back over his shoulder.

“Fine. I'll do it at lunchtime. You guys _really_ owe me.”

&.

The next two periods drag by. Cora texts him seemingly every five minutes to ask if they've found out anything. After the first dozen messages, Scott stops answering; he has nothing new to say, nothing that she doesn't already know. He doesn't take a single note in history class; focusing on anything other than the possibility of finding Stiles is impossible. Thankfully, Allison and Lydia are still on top of everything; when Scott glances over at them, they're simultaneously paying attention to the teacher and working on Stiles' homework, effortlessly duplicating his distinct writing.

Scott’s fairly certain that, if the two of them put their minds to it, they could be criminal masterminds. 

Finally, the lunch bell rings. Scott skips the cafeteria; he's too shaken up to have an appetite. Instead, he heads straight to the library and finds Danny sitting at the first table inside the doors, tapping away at his laptop. 

“Stiles' phone has been turned off all day,” he says without looking up, frowning down at the screen. “But I did manage to figure out where he was the last time it was turned it on.”

“Where?” Scott asks, leaning over Danny's shoulder. There's a map displaying on the screen, a grid that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There's not even street names on it but right in the center, there's a green dot with a set of coordinates beside it. 

“It's the outskirts of town, out near the interstate,” Danny says. “There's a lot of strip malls out there, so I can't tell specifically what building it's coming from.” Scott stares at the map for a few more moments before he pats Danny on the shoulder. 

“Can you tell me how to get there?”

&.

As soon as the final bell rings, Scott bolts for the parking lot. Once again, Isaac has managed to beat him to the dirt bike, and he's already astride it, holding his helmet in his hands.

“So, do we know anything about what we're about to go into?” he asks casually, rapid heartbeat betraying his cool demeanor. 

“Nope. Just the coordinates and the street name,” Scott sighs. Still, it's better than what they had only a few hours ago, and he hopes that once they get out to that part of town, he'll be able to catch a scent, one that isn't masked by that horrible, rotten smell. Just thinking about it makes his throat clench up. 

Just as he swings his leg over the seat, his cell goes off again, and this time, it's a phone call. For the few seconds that it takes him to fumble his phone out of his pocket, his heart practically stops, as he hopes with everything he has that it's going to be Stiles' name flashing on his screen. 

Unsurprisingly, it's Cora. 

“I'm meeting you out there,” she says bluntly as soon as he answers. “Isaac texted me the coordinates, I'm already on the way.”

“Cora, you don't have to-”

“I'm going to be there. He's my goddamn brother. I deserve to see what's happened to him.”

“They might not be there anymore,” he says, starting the dirt bike up. 

“I don't care. I need to know, Scott.” With that, she hangs up, and Scott doesn't bother calling her back. Instead, he pulls his helmet over his head and sets off, Isaac calling out directions as they venture into a part of town Scott is almost entirely unfamiliar with.

Suddenly, even through the combined scents of gasoline and exhaust fumes and sweat, he smells it. It hits him so hard that he jerks the bike hard to the right. Thankfully, the movement gets them out of the road and onto a patch of grass between the shoulder and the sidewalk, and that's where Scott jumps off, yanks his helmet over his head and throws it to the ground, nose pointed upwards.

_Blood_. The scent is thick, almost suffocating, growing stronger with each moment that passes. After a few minutes of running almost blindly, Scott begins to pick out notes in the smell that are identical to what they'd found at the loft; something almost woodsy, something specific to werewolf blood; even more specifically, _Derek's_ blood, and based on how it dominates the scent, lots of it. But that isn't all; the closer he gets, feet pounding against the pavement, he catches other notes as well, notes that are overwhelmingly sweet, like powdered sugar, very distinctly Stiles. It's all he can focus on; he's pretty sure that he could get hit by a bus and not notice, so long as that smell continues to flood his nose. 

When the smell finally reaches what he thinks must be its peak (because if it gets any stronger, it's going to smother him), he glances up for the first time in nearly twenty minutes. He's standing in front of a small motel, two levels high, maybe thirty or so rooms total. It has a distinct look of decrepitude, like no one really cares for it. It reminds him very strongly of the Glen Capri motel, of the day he'd almost lit himself on fire, the day Stiles was willing to go up in flames with him. 

He knows that there are thousands of motels across the country that are almost identical, but he doesn't think that it's a coincidence. 

“Scott!” Isaac yells behind him. When Scott glances back over his shoulder, Isaac is pushing the bike along, forehead drenched in sweat, helmets dangling from either side of the handlebars. He kicks the kickstand into place at the edge of the parking lot and joins Scott. His eyes are glimmering golden, and Scott is very glad that the full moon is still two weeks away, because if it was any closer, he's pretty sure that Isaac would be teetering on the edge of blood lust. 

“It's here,” Scott says, trying to breathe through his mouth rather than his nose. “This is where Stiles was when he called.” The parking lot is filled with cars covered in dents and faded paint jobs, vehicles that have seen better days, but Derek's Camaro is nowhere to be seen. 

“What room?” Isaac asks. His words are slightly slurred, like his fangs are trying to press through his gums. Scott shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to see if maybe he can smell or hear something that will point him in the right direction. 

He doesn't even get a chance to exhale before he's interrupted.

“Room 22.” When he turns around, Cora is strolling out of the motel’s office. “Sometimes, doing the human thing works better. Guy behind the counter said two people matching their descriptions showed up yesterday around noon, and he hasn't seen them since. Remembered them because 'one of them looked like he was gonna rip my throat out if I didn’t give them a room.'”

“Don't suppose he had a security tape we could look at?” Isaac asks. In response, Cora rolls her eyes, pulls a key ring out of her pocket and twirls it around her finger.

“Don't need a damn tape. I'm going in.” 

“Cora, it could be dangerous-”

“Scott, I do _not_ care. How many times do I have to say that before you actually listen?” With that, she heads for the stairs leading up to the second level, mounting the steps three at a time. By the time Scott and Isaac catch up with her, she's already at the door for room 22, working the key into the lock. 

“It's stuck,” she growls, viciously twisting the key. With a sharp snap, it breaks into two pieces. Before Scott can make a suggestion, Cora takes a step back and lashes her foot forward. It connects just beside the door knob and, with a massive clang, the door flies open. Cora dashes inside, and just as Scott reaches the doorway, taking gulping breaths through his mouth, he hears a quiet whimper. It's unlike _anything_ Scott has ever heard come out of her mouth, but as soon as he steps through the door, he completely understands why. 

The room is _saturated_ with blood. It's streaked across the carpet and the walls, laying in puddles on the small dresser against one wall and the bedside table, splattered across the ceiling. But the bed is by far the worst part; the blankets and sheets are sitting in a pile on the floor, and it looks like they’ve been dyed red. The mattress is sodden, but the blood appears to be old; it's dried to an ugly brown, so dark that it's nearly black. 

The curtain rod is hanging askew, and what may have once been a table for holding keys is now nothing more than a mess of splintered wood beside the door. Scott has to pinch his nose shut, because not only is the smell of blood so overwhelming that it's affecting his other senses, but the rotten smell is back in full force. While Cora kneels at the end of the bed, slowly reaching out and tentatively gathering up the blankets (which look like they were shredded by a set of claws), Scott turns his attention to the bathroom. 

Before he's even reached the part of the room where the rough carpet changes to tile, he feels glass crunch beneath his feet. Once he's entered the bathroom, there's a louder crunch and an accompanying _crack_ , and he fumbles on the wall for the light switch. It seems to take an eternity for the light to splutter on, but when it finally does, Scott has to bite back a whimper of his own. 

Stiles' phone is just beside his foot, and the screen is a kaleidoscopic web of cracks. The linoleum tiles around it are smeared with more blood, and the small, low bathtub is drenched as well. The shower curtain has been torn off and is lying in a crumpled up lump, along with some bloodied clothes that look an awful lot like Stiles'. Although Scott can't be certain, it looks like they've been shredded like the blankets in the main room.

But the part that scares him most isn't the blood; after his conversation with Stiles, part of him had been prepared for that. 

It's the dirt covering the floor. 

When he nudges it with his toe, it scatters across the tiles, separating into tinier and tinier grains. Scott has no idea where it came from; he hadn't seen any of it out in the main room, and there's no hole in the ceiling, no cracks in the walls that it could have spilled out of. When he takes his fingers away from his nose, a hot wave of bile rushes up his throat as the rotten stink floods his nostrils. On a whim, he crouches down and points his nose towards the floor.

It's the dirt. The smell is coming from the dirt. 

There's a hand towel hanging on a bar beside the sink and Scott grabs it, sweeps as much of the dirt as he can into it, knots it tightly and puts it in his pocket, hoping that the stink won't ruin his jacket. He doesn't recognize the dirt as anything from the jars on Stiles' desk; frankly, if it weren't for the smell, he’d just think it was run of the mill dirt, tracked in by someone's shoes. 

He grabs the clothes out of the bathtub next, and he only has to briefly examine them to confirm that they're Stiles'. There are numerous holes in both of the shirts; a few look like normal wear and tear, but there are long, jagged gashes that definitely look like werewolf claws. His jeans are even worse; the knees of them are completely ripped out.

Even if it weren't for the rips, the clothing would be completely written off. The fabric is crusted with blood, and the dirt is there too, mashed into the fibers of Stiles' jeans, filling the pockets. Nonetheless, even though the clothes are ruined, he bundles them up anyways. 

There's nothing else in the bathroom, aside from Stiles' phone, and even though there is no chance of it ever working again (Scott doesn't know if it was already destroyed before he stepped on it, but chunks of glass have fallen out of the screen, and there are a few very tiny wires poking out of the casing), he pockets it as well. 

In the main room, Cora is still sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, holding the shredded sheets up to her face. Isaac is searching through the room's dresser which is, remarkably, unbroken. However, it seems like it's going to be of no use to them; Isaac shoves the last drawer back in loud enough for something to crack and sighs, running a hand through his hair. 

“There's nothing in there,” he says. 

“I'm not surprised,” Scott replies, taking the time to close the door the best he can. As he expected, Cora’s kick knocked it askew on the hinges, and no matter how hard he pushes, it won't close the last four inches but it's better than just leaving it wide open; he knows that the proprietors of businesses like this usually turn a blind eye to all sorts of activities, but there's a difference between letting a couple use your room for their affair and ignoring a suite covered in blood. On that note, he has absolutely no idea what they're going to do about the room; sooner or later, someone is going to discover it and call the police. 

If Stiles were around, Scott is sure that he'd suggest something akin to arson. But Scott thinks that it might just be better to call the sheriff ahead of time and hope to God that he'll be able to come up with an explanation for anyone who asks. 

“It's Derek's blood,” Cora says quietly, finally lowering the sheets from her face. There's a quiver to her voice that's so foreign that it takes Scott a few moments to fully reconcile himself to the fact that it actually came out of her mouth. “Not all of it, but most of it.” 

“I know,” Scott says, holding up the bundle of bloodied fabric in his hands. “Stiles' is all over the bathroom. I need to call his dad. He needs to know.” 

“I'll keep looking for something,” Isaac says, his eyes sweeping the room. “There has to be _something_ here.” Scott drops Stiles' clothes beside the door before he steps outside, dialing the sheriff's number. John answers after only one ring.

“Hey, Scott,” he sighs and, for a moment, Scott is completely taken aback. The sheriff sounds like he's aged two decades in the last twenty-four hours, sounds even more weary than usual. 

Scott _really_ hopes that he hasn't been drinking again. 

“Have you had any luck?” Scott asks. 

“No, not yet. I put the APB on Derek out, said he was a bail jumper. Haven't heard anything back yet. No sign of the Camaro either. What about you?” Scott swallows, tilts his head back, and closes his eyes. Selfish as it may be, he's glad that he isn't having this conversation in person. He doesn't think that he would be able to handle the look that he knows is about to cross John's face.

“Yeah,” he croaks, swallowing again to bring some moisture back into his throat. “We found something.”


	7. i, vii: It

Even though the sun is just beginning its slow lope towards the horizon, the forest is cool and dark. This deep in, the trees are so close together that it's difficult for light to pierce through them. At night, It imagines that it’s just a mass of inky blackness only sporadically broken by piercing rays from the invasive moon. 

It can't wait to see it. 

But that is still a few hours away. For now, It waits at the base of a tree, conserving energy; while It had gained much from the previous night's events, splitting that energy between two bodies is difficult. So It stays perfectly still, seeing out of two sets of eyes at once, staring straight ahead into the foliage.

Its target is just over the next hill, holed up in an old stone cottage that’s little more than ruins. He's alone, although It isn't surprised by that; if It had been humiliated as badly as the formerly blind werewolf, It would have slunk off into the woods as well. 

On second thought, that’s a lie. It would not have scurried away; It would have waited until It was stronger, until It could easily tear throats and shred flesh and saturate Its mouth with warm, steaming blood.

A twinge of hunger passes through It, but only a twinge; It quenched Its thirst less than twenty-four hours ago. Werewolf blood had been nothing like It had expected, a truly unexpected pleasure. Perhaps it was just because the wolf It had chosen was so full of darkness, of loathing and hatred-

_(towards the other wolves towards his own family towards himself towards the boy who ran with wolves but yet wasn't a wolf at all the boy he wanted so much and could never have)_

-but it had been nearly intoxicating. The boy's blood was quenching, but in comparison to the werewolf's, it had been downright disappointing. But he’d been full of his own brand of darkness. He'd been so easy to crack, so tired, so devoted to his precious studies, so determined to-

( _do better have to do better have to protect all of them can't let it happen again can't lose Dad can't lose Scott can't lose Derek_ ) 

-fulfill the role that he was far from ready for. Underneath that pathetic determination, there’d been all sorts of angry thoughts, some of which bordered on murderous. It was an unexpected surprise, and that discovery had made It decide not to simply dump the boy's body once It found another host. 

It _did_ wish that It had been able to worm Its way into the true alpha, had been able to pierce through his armor and seep into his soul. But the _energy_ it took to do that was still maddeningly out of reach. 

Perhaps after It had devoured the boy's soul, perhaps after It had drained the former alpha down to mere dregs, perhaps then It would have enough strength to do it. 

But there was no point in thinking about that now, not when Its next meal was only a few hours away. It couldn’t help but ponder how marvelous the blood of the other werewolf was going to taste; It had a feeling that it was going to be positively succulent, a veritable treasure trove of energy, because both of them, the boy and the beta, _hated_ the other werewolf. Not as much as they hated others, but there was no point in going after the main course first. That was just bound to end in disappointment. 

It wondered if they knew how much they had in common, if they knew just how much space they took up in the other's brain. It would have to ask, if one of them managed to break through again. 

If It had to do it all over again, It would have skipped over controlling two bodies at once. Sure, it offered all sorts of new opportunities, all sorts of wonderful ways to wreak havoc, but frankly, it was _exhausting_. 

A sound came through the trees. It was faint, just the sound of footsteps on a stone floor, but It felt excitement building again. Pure and absolute hunger began to build in Its guts at the thought of what It had to look forward to. 

Soon. But only once darkness fell. It had to wait for that. 

So It sat back, closed Its eyes (all four of them) and waited. 

It was a very patient being. 


	8. i, viii: Scott

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the delay in posting this chapter; Femslash February kind of took over my life for a few weeks.

Scott tries to follow the scent of Derek's blood out of the hotel room, but there are too many overlapping scents in the parking lot, and he can’t stay focused. Cora tries once she emerges from the room and does considerably better but even then, she only manages to track it a few miles, to one of the mostly abandoned industrial areas on the outskirts of town.

That’s where they find the Camaro, parked behind a warehouse. The inside of it is almost as bad as Stiles' Jeep; dried blood coats the leather seats, and there is more rotten dirt ground deep into the floor mats. Even worse than that, however, is what they find in the glove compartment, sitting on top of the usual clutter of owner's manuals and insurance papers.

It’s a tiny piece of paper, ragged at the edges, some typing visible along the bottom, like it was torn from a book. There’s four words scrawled on it in Stiles' spindly handwriting.

 _Come and get me._

From there on, the search is a bust. They’re able to track the scent a little further, but they’re still within sight of the Camaro when it ends in a mound of ashes. Scott immediately thinks the worst, thinks that they are staring at the cremated remnants of a body. But that feeling thankfully alleviates once he gets a better glimpse at the pile. It’s simply too small for that, and when he sifts through it, he finds a scrap of fabric that may have been part of a shirt at some point. 

It’s the end of the trail, for them, at least. There’s still someone who could help them, someone who may know more about tracking than they do, but the second Scott brings up Peter, Cora’s claws fly out and she closes the space between them, so that they're nose to nose. 

“He stays out of this,” she hisses, fangs protruding from her mouth. “We don't need his help.” With that, she turns on her heel and stomps away. Scott can hear her heartbeat racing, can hear the breath whooshing in and out of her nose like she's trying desperately to stop herself from ripping someone open. 

“Okay,” he says quietly, resisting the instinct to take a step forward and lay a hand on her shoulder, because although werewolves are inherently tactile creatures, the human side of Cora isn’t. “Okay. We won't get him involved.”

They spend the next three days conducting seemingly endless amounts of research. Allison and Lydia have (carefully concealed) bags underneath their eyes from hours doing their own schoolwork and Stiles' combined with hours of combing through archaic texts in the hope of finding something. But nothing is forthcoming; they still don’t have a name for the being, and most of the information they find is nothing more than heresy, folktales passed down through the years. There’s nothing concrete that they can use, nothing that tells them how to hunt the thing down.

By the end of the third day, Scott is exhausted. Since the danger has calmed down for the time being, Allison and Lydia have gone back to sleeping at their own homes, alternating between Lydia's one night and Allison's the next. But as much as he misses his mom and his own bed, Scott’s still staying at the loft. Isaac left for the house just after nine, leaving the place empty aside from Scott, and every sound is amplified. Scott can hear some quiet heartbeats in the wall, probably rats or mice.

He'll have to tell Derek about them, when

( _if_ )

they get him back. 

He's fairly sure that isn't going to get any sleep any time soon; he simply stares at the high ceiling, trying to discern the stars through the murky glass, trying to comb through his brain for anything he missed, anything that happened in the weeks leading up to Stiles' abduction that could possibly give them a clue as to where he is. 

But there’s nothing. He’s just drawing blanks. 

Just after ten, the alarm for the door blares, and he springs to his feet, claws popping out. Thankfully, it's just Isaac, carrying two backpacks, his hair damp. 

“The water pressure at your house is better,” he shrugs by way of explanation, and Scott sighs gratefully and puts his claws away as Isaac turns off the alarm. 

“I wasn’t sure if you were coming back,” he says. 

“I told you that I wasn't leaving,” Isaac says, crossing the loft in a few long strides and dropping the backpacks beside the air mattress. “You don't have to do this alone, Scott. Not unless you want to, not unless you want to be-”

“No,” Scott says, and he means it with everything he has. “I don't want to be alone and I... I _can't_ do this by myself.” Isaac nods and lowers his gaze, settling down onto the air mattress. 

“Have you heard anything from the douchebag?” he asks casually, kicking his shoes off before he swings his legs up onto the mattress and stretches out. 

“You mean Peter?” 

“Yeah.” 

“No.” Scott sits down on Isaac's side of the mattress and rummages through one of the backpacks until he finds a pair of sweatpants that are comfier than the loose jeans he's wearing. “I have no idea where he is. Hopefully out of town, if we're lucky.” He stands up, kicks his jeans off, and hops into the sweatpants before he slides onto the other side of the mattress. He has a feeling that it's going to be almost completely deflated by morning, but he'll deal with that problem when it arises. For now, he needs to try and get some sleep.

But that doesn't happen. He ends up staring up at the ceiling again, unable to drift off even with Isaac's breathing a comforting lull beside him. There's no awkwardness between them, and Scott doesn't think it's just because they've been sharing the same bed for several days. It feels like something _more_ than that, something that he can't quite name or understand. The days where he considered Isaac to be an actual threat seem so distant now, even though it’s only been a few months. 

For all rights and purposes, he knows that he has no right to think of Isaac as pack; it was Derek's bite that turned him, Derek who gave him the power to stand up for himself. But it was also Derek who kicked him out, who rejected him, and when that happened, Isaac came to Scott for help. 

Isaac isn't his beta, but he still feels like something more than a friend or another werewolf. 

“I don't know what I'm going to say if we find him,” Isaac says quietly. When Scott glances over, Isaac is mirroring his position, arms crossed underneath his head, staring up at the ceiling. Scott wonders if it's an instinctive thing or if he's just trying to be comfortable. 

“To Derek?” Isaac nods.

“Yeah. We never talked about what happened, about him kicking me out. I don't know if we really _should_ talk about it. How do you tell someone that you don't want to be their beta anymore?” 

“You still think you're his beta?” Scott asks, as his stomach swoops in a wholly unfamiliar matter. 

“Yeah. I mean, only because he bit me. But I haven't actually considered him to be my alpha for a long time. I don't know if I have an alpha anymore. Maybe it's you. I wouldn’t mind that.” He shrugs again, and Scott doesn't know if it's because of the moonlight streaming through the windows above, or if it's because of the way Isaac is being honest and forthcoming in a way Scott doesn't think he's ever been with anyone else, but he's suddenly struck by the urge to kiss Isaac. 

It's only when Isaac turns his head and looks at him that Scott realizes that he's been staring for a few moments. He plans on looking away, on clearing his throat and trying to forget the urge, but when Isaac's eyes lock onto his, it becomes impossible to tear himself away, and he urge only escalates. The longer he looks, the louder Isaac's heartbeat gets. Maybe this is why it always seems so _loud_ to Scott, why he can hear it in every room, easily pick it out in a crowd. Maybe this is what he's known all along, on some level at least. 

The way Isaac is staring at him seems to suggest the same thing, and he shifts over, until their ankles bump together. Isaac swallows, his lips parted slightly, curls brushing over his forehead. He's gorgeous; Scott's known that for some time in a purely objective sense, but now, it's almost blinding. 

Before he can make a move, his phone rings. He rolls off the mattress in his haste to answer it, and he fumbles it out of the pocket of his jeans. He doesn't recognize the number, but the area code is a Beacon Hills one, so he answers it. 

“Hello?” For a few long moments, there's no words from the other end, but Scott can hear harsh, labored breathing, like someone who is just getting over a panic attack, and his stomach drops to the floor. 

“Stiles?” he asks. Behind him, he hears the air mattress shift as Isaac slides off it and joins him on the floor. “Stiles, is that you?” Finally, the breathing changes to a long sigh, followed by a deep chuckle that makes Scott's blood run cold. 

The laugh is far too cruel to belong to Stiles.

“Hello, Scott. Scotty. That's what he calls you, right? That's what the boy called you when he screamed for help?” The voice sounds _rusty_ , like someone who hasn't spoken for a very long time and the words are stilted, stumbling along in an odd rhythm. 

“Who is this?” he asks. “Where have you taken Stiles and Derek?” 

“ _I_ haven't taken them anywhere,” the being laughs. “I mean, I was the one who propelled them there, but they chose the destination. It was their idea.” This rings a bell in Scott’s head, makes him think about what Peter said about the beings taking their victim's darkest thoughts and acting upon them. Beside him, Isaac jumps to his feet, and when Scott looks back over his shoulder, Isaac's fumbling his own phone out of his bag, presumably to call the girls. 

“Where are you?” 

“Asking again won't make me tell you,” the being says. “I mean, you could try asking nicely, and I _might_ be persuaded, but it depends on how I feel at the moment. There are _some_ questions I might answer. You just have to know which ones to ask.” Scott runs through his mind, trying to think of what he could ask that might elicit a response. 

Finally, he decides to ask the most obvious question of all.

“Why did you take them?” he asks. “Why did you take Stiles and Derek?” 

“Excellent!” the being coos, and it sounds so _wrong_ coming from Stiles' mouth that Scott wants to punch something in sheer frustration. “That’s a question I can answer! What do you want to know first: the reason I took the boy, or the reason I took the poor, damaged werewolf?” 

“Stiles. I want to know why you took Stiles,” he replies hurriedly. The being clucks, makes a humming sound, and chuckles again, like it physically cannot stay silent.

“Because he screwed up,” it finally says, in the tone of a parent speaking to an unruly child. “He brought me here. He was the one who summoned me-”

“It was an accident,” Scott interjects. “He didn’t deliberately summon you!”

“Technicalities. All technicalities. I merely did what I was told to do. Now _Derek_ on the other hand...” It trails off into another laugh that makes Scott's stomach churn. “It was supposed to be you. I'm sure you know that by now. A true alpha, all mine to control, oh Scotty, we could have had so much _fun_. I would have made you tear Derek apart, and I would have left your poor Stiles alive just long enough to watch. I would have made him watch you rip open the man he's obsessed with. The _energy_ , Scott! Oh, the energy, it would have been exhilarating.”

It's the second time that Scott has heard something surprising about Stiles' relationship with Derek, but once again, he pushes it to the back of his mind. It's none of his business and, for the time being, it's also not that important. 

“I must say,” the being continues, “even though I'm a little disappointed, Derek's not terrible. Weaker, yes, but he's got bad thoughts like you wouldn't _believe_. He's got sharp teeth and sharp claws and oh, can he use them.” 

“What did he do?” Scott asks, trying not to let the waver in his voice come through. 

“What did _they_ do?” the being corrects. “I have both of them, after all. They're both mine and I'm theirs, it goes both ways, you see. Anyways, I'm not going to tell you what they did. Instead, I'd like to ask you another question.” 

“Everyone is on the way,” Isaac says quietly behind him, and Scott nods tersely. 

“Scotty, are you still listening to me? I'm not going to repeat myself,” the being sing-songs. 

“I'm listening,” Scott says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I'm listening. What do you want to ask?”

“I know that you've seen a lot of things. Seen a lot of blood. The boy's head is positively _swimming_ in it. But have you ever seen two wild animals murder each other? Have you ever seen one wolf rip out another's throat? It's intoxicating, Scotty, it's...” The being trails off into a shuddering moan, and when it speaks again, the voice it's using is no longer Stiles'; it's a corrupt version of Derek's, wavering and broken with pain.

“Scott, it's so much _fun_. If you want to see, I left you a present. It's not far. Put that big bad nose of yours in the air and start sniffing. Enjoy.” With that, the call ends, and Scott just barely resists throwing his phone across the room. He immediately springs to his feet and grabs his shoes, not even taking the time to change back into his jeans. 

“Did it say where they are?” Isaac asks, pulling on his own boots as he speaks. 

“No,” Scott says, zipping his hoodie up. “But it left us something. I think it left us another werewolf.”

&.

Isaac texts the others while they're on the way, informing them of what has happened. Scott has a suspicion that whatever (or whoever) they're looking for is in the preserve, and sure enough, as soon as he parks the dirt bike outside of the gate and pulls his helmet off, he can smell the fresh blood of a new kill, somewhere close by.

He forces himself to wait until Cora, Allison and Lydia show up in Allison's car. Scott has no idea how the three of them are managing to get along, but so far, he hasn't overheard any death threats between them, which is a bonus. As soon as her feet touch the ground, Cora shifts; her eyes flash golden, and her whole body tenses into one line, ready to bolt at any moment. It's an effortless change, and frankly, it's one he envies.

“We have to be prepared,” Scott says, glancing into the dark line of the trees. “Just in case it's one of them.” 

“It's not,” Cora says, and the sheer certainty in her voice is enough to convince him. 

They take off into the woods together, and with each step, the scent grows stronger. After only a few moments, Scott realizes where they're going, and that realization makes his stomach drop again. 

The house. They're headed for the old Hale house. He should have been watching it, should have been patrolling the area, just in case they came back. But there's really no time for him to feel guilty about should-haves, not when the house is right over the next knoll. 

They find the body underneath one of the massive trees at the back of the burned-out structure. As they get closer, Scott realizes that the ground is absolutely sodden with blood, and when he’s close enough to make out the body's features, he has to suck in a deep breath just to keep himself from throwing up. 

It's Deucalion. He'd run from Beacon Hills, but apparently he hadn't run far enough. His decapitated head is the only part of him that's recognizable; it's sitting in a tangled jumble of roots, and there's a gaudy red bow sitting on top of his skull. The rest of him is scattered; a leg and arm here, a pile of viscera there. Behind him, Scott hears someone throw up, although he can't be sure who it is. He doesn't blame them. After all the things they've seen, it still disgusts him, but more than that, it _frightens_ him. 

“Claw marks,” Cora says quietly. When Scott turns around, she's crouched on the ground, holding up an arm, her pinched mouth the only sign that she's uncomfortable with the situation. When he looks closer, he realizes that she's right; in addition to having been ripped from his torso, Deucalion’s forearm is marred by three long, jagged cuts, so deep that Scott can see glistening bone peeking out.

“They're on every piece,” Isaac adds. Even under the dim light of the moon, Scott can see the slightly greenish tinge of Isaac’s skin, but despite his nausea, he's inspecting a larger lump of flesh, Deucalion’s torso by the looks of it, closely. 

“Derek did this,” Allison says, nudging at another piece of flesh with her boot. “But what about Stiles?”

“None of this blood is his,” Scott says with certainty. 

“But what do we do with this?” Lydia asks, arms crossed firmly across her chest. “We already knew that it was capable of using them both to kill. This doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.”

“It's trying to scare us,” Isaac says. “It just wants to scare us so that we're easier to manipulate.” They're both right. Yes, they have a body in front of them, a body that has been torn limb from limb in a display of nothing less than pure savagery, but it doesn't give them any clues as to where Derek and Stiles are or who they might go after next. It's nothing more than a show of force and power.

“Then we don't get scared,” Scott says firmly, turning his back on the body. “We don't let this get to us. We've seen worse.” It's a lie, and he's sure the others know it, but he thinks that it's the right thing to say at the moment. “It's... it's just Deucalion. It's not someone we love.” 

“Not this time,” Lydia says quietly, and Scott nods. 

“That’s why we need to stop them before that happens.”


	9. i, ix: Derek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies once again for the wait between chapters. now that Femslash February is over, I'll be returning to a more regular posting schedule (ie, two chapters a week).

When Derek opens his eyes again, it's dark. He can hear the rumble of passing transport trucks and other large vehicles nearby, which seems to indicate he’s near the interstate. He blinks once, twice, three times, waiting for his vision to clear. Once it does, he still can't see much; there's a sliver of sickly orange streetlight stretching into the room beside him. That little sliver is enough for him to discern some of the furniture in the room, but it appears to be typical motel furnishings, nearly identical to what he'd seen the last time he woke up. 

When was that? His memory of the event is murky. He remembers sitting in a chair, remembers a mocking, raspy voice brushing against his ear, but the rest of the details are sketchy. 

How long has it been? How long has he been away from the waking world?

Since his memories and his sight aren’t providing him with anything useful, he focuses on his other senses. He's lying on a bed, that much is clear, and there's a pillow underneath his head, a blanket pulled up to cover his bare chest. There are a number of small aches, more annoying than painful, scattered across his body, but beyond the physical feeling of his skin knitting together, there's another sensation that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 

It’s the sensation of being stared at. 

He isn't alone in the room. 

He doesn't dare move, not even to twitch a finger. Instead, he closes his eyes again, clears his mind the best he can, and inhales deeply. He easily sifts out the common smells associated with everyday life; fabric softener, laundry detergent, bleach. 

What he's left with doesn't paint a pretty picture. There's blood, coming from all directions, impossible to pin down to one spot, although he _can_ separate it into two distinct sources. Some of it is werewolf in origin, but some is human, and although he (thankfully) hasn't had much occasion to smell Stiles' blood, he knows the other scents that go along with him, and the blood contains notes of those, of peppermint and sharp magic. 

Where _is_ Stiles? 

He’d been at the loft; Derek remembers that much. That in itself wasn’t unusual; he’d given Stiles a key to the loft months ago, just after school let out, once he realized how stressed and overworked Stiles was. The loft was a quiet place where he could work if he needed to focus, if he needed a place away from the rest of the pack.

That was the only reason Derek had done it. There’d been no ulterior motive.

“Liar.”

The croaking voice comes from Derek's left; at least, it _sounds_ like it comes from his left. Truthfully, he doesn't know if the voice is there at all or if he’s imagining it. He doesn't move or acknowledge it in any way; he keeps his eyes closed and keeps combing through his shaky memories.

The last thing he remembers with any certainty about what happened in the loft is the bruising feeling of Stiles' mouth against his own.

It was light years away from how he'd imagined kissing Stiles would be. Not that that was something he thought about often. Sure, there were a few occasions where he was bored and Stiles just wouldn't _shut up_ about something and in order to keep himself from snapping, Derek had distracted himself by staring at Stiles' constantly moving mouth. As long as he didn't listen to what Stiles was saying, it was actually a rather transfixing sight. 

But he'd never thought about it in circumstances other than that. 

“Liar.” This time, the voice comes from right beside Derek's ear, and hot breath ghosts over his neck. “You’ve thought about it. You’ve thought about it a _lot_. But there's no reason to feel guilty, Derek.” The breath shifts, wafts over his cheek and his jaw, and when Derek surreptitiously breathes in through his nose, he has to use all of his willpower to not gag. He is all too familiar with the scent only inches away from his face; it’s the same scent he choked on when he discovered Laura's bisected corpse, the same stench that enveloped Cora before Derek saved her.

It’s sickness. Sickness and rot and _death_ , and it’s in the bed with him, and he still doesn’t know where Stiles is. 

“The boy thought about it too. He thought about it constantly, you were all _over_ his mind. No wonder he was so tired.” A chuckle slips by his ear, followed by the clicking of a tongue, and wet lips brush over Derek’s cheek. The mattress shifts slightly as the weight of a body settles over him, knees against his waist.

“You're lying,” he says before he can stop himself. It _has_ to be a lie, has to be the thing just trying to rile him up. The being laughs cruelly and leans closer, bringing the stench of rot with it. 

“I lie about many things, this is true.” Derek doesn't know how he missed it before but now, realization hits him like a fist to the stomach. It's hard to pick it out, mired as it is underneath layers of cruelty and sickness, but Derek can hear Stiles in the thing's voice, can hear his inflections and speech patterns, even if the words coming out are different from how he usually speaks. 

“But I'm not lying about this. _Sour wolf_ , he sometimes calls you. _Big guy_ , he calls you that as well. Strange names. But he doesn't call you those as often now, does he? He's been saying your name more and more. He _likes_ your name, Derek. He likes a lot of things about you. Would you like me to name some?”

“No,” Derek growls as his claws press through his skin and dig into the mattress. He has a plan, one that steadfastly involves _not_ thinking about what the thing is saying, not letting himself be goaded. If he can catch the thing by surprise, maybe he can buck it off and run. 

But he doesn't get a chance to try. Instead, the thing laughs again and this time, the cold press of a nose runs along his chin before it pulls away. That's followed by a quiet click, and even from behind his still closed eyelids, Derek can see the room light up.

“That's one of the things the boy loves about you,” the thing says and suddenly, iron fingers bite into Derek’s wrist. The pain radiates all the way down to the tip of his claws. “Those vicious things. Oh, the boy _loves_ when those dig into his _throat_.”

Derek's eyes snap open, and although he has only a few seconds before the thing using Stiles' voice leans down and climbs inside him once more, Derek sees enough to make him scream.


	10. i, x: Scott

Two days after they find Deucalion’s body in the woods, Scott wakes up before the sun. 

Isaac is beside him, blankets bunched around his ribs, breathing still deep with sleep. The other air mattress is a mess of tangled limbs and heartbeats; after finding the first body, the girls had all returned to the loft to sleep. Scott had assumed that Cora was going to take Derek's bed, but without saying a word, she’d piled onto the mattress with Allison and Lydia. Even more surprisingly, she’d situated herself between them and that’s where she still is; he can just glimpse her dark hair through the screen of Lydia's. Based on the steady, slow rhythm of their entwined heartbeats, they’re all still fast asleep. 

So what woke him up? 

After a few restless moments, he gets up, concrete floor cold underneath his bare feet. He doesn’t feel thirsty, but hopefully a glass of water will get him back to sleep, because balancing school, lacrosse and trying to find Stiles is difficult enough with six hours of sleep a night, let alone four. 

As he walks by the loft door, he catches a scent. It’s faint, but it makes his stomach plummet, and he slowly pulls the door open, preparing himself for the worst.

When he looks down, there’s a red, oversized bow resting on the floor, the same kind that had been attached to Deucalion’s remains. When he stoops to pick the bow up, his hand grazes over cold, dead flesh. 

The bow is attached to three fingers that are tied together with festive red ribbon. There's a tiny scrap of paper slotted between the ribbon and the fingers, and based on the lettering Scott can see along the ragged edge, it's from the same source as the other note they found in the glove compartment of the Camaro. 

_There's more where that came from._

Reluctantly, he brings the fingers up to his face and gives them a quick sniff, searching for anything that might reveal who they belong to. But other than blood and faint traces of hand soap, there's nothing of any use. Sighing, he sets them back on the ground and goes back to the bed to grab his phone. When he sits down on the edge of the mattress, Isaac rolls over and swings his arm towards Scott. 

“Everything alright?” he mumbles, voice thick with sleep. Scott sighs and pats Isaac's elbow. Since their near-kiss two nights ago, the touches between them have become far more prevalent. Scott's grateful for them, grateful for the way Isaac's hand has casually come to rest on his shoulder, the way he doesn't flinch when Scott moves closer to him while they sleep. The touches are grounding him. 

Now, he needs that grounding more than ever.

“No,” he sighs, moving his hand away from Isaac's arm so he can grab his phone from his bag. “It left us another clue. It left us _fingers_.” Isaac remains still for a moment before he sits up and rubs at his eyes, tousled curls falling onto his forehead. 

“Do you know whose they are?” he asks quietly, shooting a glance over at the girls. Despite the low volume of his voice, Cora still stirs slightly, and Scott knows it's only a matter of moments before she wakes up. 

“No idea.” He finally fumbles his phone out of his backpack and stares at it for a few moments. He can’t help but feel a tad guilty about dragging the sheriff further into this mess, but this is far from Scott’s area of expertise, and as smart as Danny may be, Scott doesn't think he has the technology to identify someone based on their fingerprints. 

That, and Scott is pretty sure that if he presented Danny with three severed fingers, Danny would just call the sheriff anyways.

Might as well skip the middle step.

So instead, he dials John's personal number. 

“Scott? Is everything okay?” he asks after answering on the second ring, and even though he's obviously trying very hard to hide it, Scott can still hear the hope in his voice. 

He hates that he's about to extinguish that hope.

“No,” he sighs. “No, it's really not.”

&.

By the time Scott and Cora arrive at the station, it's just after six o'clock. Shift change isn't for another hour so thankfully, the bullpen is almost entirely empty, aside from a few deputies so focused on paperwork that they barely look up when Scott and Cora walk by. Isaac is back at the loft with Allison and Lydia, ready to move as soon as they find out who the fingers belong to.

None of them have factored school into their plans for the day. 

They find John in his office. The place is an absolute _mess_. The surface of the desk is buried beneath sheets of paper, dirty coffee mugs and food wrappers. The trash can at the side is nearly overflowing, and the whole place smells of anxiety and grease. 

John doesn't look much better. It's been a few days since Scott has seen him, and he looks like he's aged two decades. His face is stubbled for the first time in years, and his uniform is wrinkled and sagging off his shoulders. There's pen ink staining his hands, and even as Scott closes the door behind them, he polishes off yet another mug of coffee. 

“Do you have them with you?” he asks, voice a raspy croak. Scott nods and pulls the fingers, which he wrapped in a paper towel, out of his pocket and carefully deposits them on the desk. John unwraps them and examines them for a few moments, his face visibly blanching, causing the dark bags underneath his eyes to become even more prominent. 

“I'll go run them through the system,” he sighs before he carefully wraps the fingers back up in the paper towel and heads towards the door. The bullpen is louder and more crowded now, full of deputies returning to wrap up their shifts, and Scott truly hopes that John has a cover story in case any of them notice that he's walking around with three severed fingers. 

“They were right there,” Cora says quietly after John closes the door. “Right outside the door, Scott. How did we miss them?”

“I don't know,” Scott sighs. He's been saying those words a lot lately. 

The more he says them, the more useless he feels. 

The sheriff returns twenty minutes later clutching a thin manila file. Scott has almost fallen asleep in the meantime, but when the door closes with a snap, he leaps to his feet. 

“Arthur Martinson,” John says, flipping the file open. “Thirty years old, resident of Beacon Hills, arrested a few times for assault, arson. Do either of you know who that is?”

“No-”

“Do you have a picture of him?” Cora interrupts. The sheriff hands her a five by ten copy of the man's mug shot, and when Scott looks over her shoulder, he doesn’t recognize the man in the photo. He has long black hair pulled back into a ponytail, flint gray eyes, a wide nose and a thin scar down one cheek. Cora, on the other hand, seems to recognize him almost immediately; a growl falls from her lips, and she tosses the photo back at the sheriff, nostrils flared.

“Cora? What's wrong?” Scott asks.

“That bastard,” she hisses, glaring at the photo like she's trying to set it alight with her mind. “He was _there_. He was there when that psycho bitch murdered my family.” 

“He's a hunter?” Cora nods, spins on her heel, and yanks the door office open hard enough to make the glass shudder. Thankfully, no one makes the mistake of trying to stop her, and Scott turns back to the file. 

“Do you have a current address for him?”

&.

The man’s home address is only ten minutes away from the blood-stained hotel where they'd found their first clues, but they're still two blocks away from the guy's house when Scott gets a whiff of blood. His hands tighten around the handlebars of the dirt bike and, based on how Cora's arms suddenly draw tight as a noose around his waist, she smells it too.

“Almost there!” he calls back. She nods against the back of his neck, helmet touching his shoulder blades, claws digging into his stomach through his jacket. 

It doesn't take long for them to reach the address. The man’s house looks fairly typical for the neighborhood, albeit a little dilapidated; it’s one story, with beige clapboard sliding and concrete front steps littered with cracks. There's a postage stamp for a front yard with a rusted iron gate separating it from the sidewalk. An old pickup truck is parked on the street directly in front of the house, and Allison's car is right behind it. Her and Lydia are leaning against the trunk, Allison with her bow slung over her back, Lydia with her fingers wrapped around the hilt of a knife. 

“Do you even know how to use that?” Cora asks as she slides off the bike, jutting her chin towards Lydia. 

“How would you like to find out?” Lydia replies, sounding completely and utterly bored.

“Guys, let's not do this now,” Scott sighs, even though he's certain both of them are just going through the motions of their strange banter. 

Isaac is pacing on the sidewalk, hands shoved deep into his pockets, head bowed. When he looks up, his eyes are a strange murky color, neither blue nor golden. Now that they're right outside the house, the blood smell is thick and sharp. It's fresher than Deucalion’s had been, and Scott has a feeling that whoever they're about to encounter has only been dead for a few hours. 

“Isaac, come with me,” he says. “We'll check the front. Allison, Lydia, Cora, go around to the back, but be careful. If something feels wrong, that's probably because it is.” Allison takes the lead after notching an arrow to her bow; Lydia follows and Cora brings up the rear, close enough to breathe down Lydia’s neck. Before Scott pushes the front gate open, he stops and lays a hand on Isaac's shoulder, squeezing gently. 

“Are you alright?” he asks. Isaac nods and closes his eyes for a few seconds; when he flicks them open again, they're back to their normal sky blue. 

“I'll be okay,” he mutters, clearing his throat before he speaks again. “I've got your back.” Scott forces a smile and flicks the latch for the gate, pushing it open with a screech. He stops breathing through his nose halfway up the small walkway; the last thing he needs is the blood clouding his senses, blinding him to a trap or hazard. The screen door is locked, but a hard yank fixes that problem. The door behind it is ajar by a few inches, and Scott pushes it open carefully before proceeding inside. 

The front hallway is mostly clear; there's a few specks of dark liquid on the peeling tiles and while it's likely blood, it's certainly nothing that couldn't be from a cut or a bitten lip. 

But then Scott looks into the living room. 

The window is remarkably free of any stains, but it's the only exception; every other square inch of the room is drenched in blood. It's difficult to determine if there's even a body; there's some larger piles of lumpy black tissue dotted around the room, but it's impossible to determine what they actually are. Before Scott can get a chance to inspect one of them, a scream comes from the back of the house. He quickly turns on his heel (and notices how the carpet squelches beneath his feet) and bolts towards the source of the sound. 

When Scott turns into the kitchen, he discovers that even though most of the blood (and presumably, the body) is in the living room, the head has been relocated to the kitchen table. Even though the flesh is pale and speckled with blood, it's obviously their guy; his hair is still pulled back into a long, black ponytail, and Scott can see the same scar as the mugshot. There's another bow perched on top of his skull, blue rather than red. It’s almost the same color as Derek's eyes, and Scott is certain that the color choice is _not_ a coincidence. 

“There's something in his mouth,” Cora says, flaring her nostrils slightly. Sure enough, there's another scrap of paper just barely protruding from his lips, and even though the thought of touching dead flesh again makes Scott’s stomach turn, it's also not a situation he wants to put any of his friends through, so he slowly extends his fingers until he has a grip on the piece of paper and tugs gently. Thankfully, it slides out easily, saving him from actually having to pry the head's mouth open. This note is substantially longer; more worryingly, it's harder to identify the writing as Stiles’. Some of the words still look like his doing, but others are completely unrecognizable.

_Two down. How many more to go? How many more will Derek tear apart? How much blood will Stiles soak up? The answer to those is entirely up to you, Scotty. If you can't figure them out though, don't worry. We'll be visiting soon enough._

Scott just barely manages to resist crumpling the note in his fist. Instead, he gingerly slides it into his pocket. Behind him, the back door bangs open, and when he steps outside, Cora is standing in the tiny yard with her head pointed towards the sky, breathing deeply, shoulders rising and falling. 

“I can't track their scents,” she says quietly. “They must have a vehicle.”

“That's what I was thinking.” He casts a quick glance over the yard, and that's when he spots, in the back corner, a small pile of ashes, resting against the waist-high wooden fence that separates Martinson's yard from his neighbor’s. There's a black scorch mark at the bottom of the fence, and when Scott runs his fingers through the ashes, he comes up with a few burnt scraps of fabric that feel like denim. 

Burning their clothes again. Either the being really loves fire, or it's simply taunting them. 

Maybe it's both.

&.

After calling the sheriff and giving him the details of the scene, they reconvene at Deaton's clinic. Thankfully, he has no pressing duties, and he flips the _closed_ sign on the front door and joins them in the back to discuss their newest discoveries.

“We have to try and predict their next target,” he says, examining the scrap of paper from Martinson's mouth. “Deucalion, this hunter, the spirit chose them for a reason.”

“Because Derek wanted to kill them,” Cora says bluntly. “I don't blame him.”

“That's what Peter said would happen,” Isaac says. He's sitting beside Scott on the floor, long legs crossed. “He said that this thing preyed off your darkest thoughts. But so far, it seems like it's only going after people that Derek's thought about killing. What about Stiles?” Scott takes a moment to mull the question over. Stiles has jokingly threatened to kill people (including Derek) on multiple occasions, but he can't think of anyone he's actually meant it towards. Except...

“Peter,” he answers. “That's the only person I can think of.”

“Me too,” Lydia adds from where she's leaning against the counter between Allison and Cora. “After what he did to you, what he did to me...”

“What he did to my family. To Derek,” Cora concludes. “I think he's the only person they both want to kill.” 

“So is he their next target then?” Allison asks. 

“I’m not certain,” Deaton answers. “But it seems that the killings are moving closer and closer to where it all began. To the loft.” 

“What are _we_ supposed to do next?” Cora asks, crossing her arms over her chest. “You guys haven't found anything useful. Sorry,” she adds as an aside when Lydia glares at her. 

“Should we even tell Peter?” Isaac asks. “Couldn't we just, I don't know, use him as bait or something?”

“No one is getting used as bait,” Scott sighs. “Not if we can avoid it. But Cora’s right. We still don't know how to fix this. We don't know how to get that thing out of them. Do we?” Deaton pauses for a moment, hands resting on the edge of the counter, shoulders slumped. It's a posture akin to defeat, and the longer Deaton goes without speaking, the more Scott's stomach drops. 

“There may be something,” he finally replies wearily. “It's a ritual I found in one of Derek’s old texts.”

“What's the catch?” Allison immediately asks, and Scott can't help but realize how close the three girls are; they're pressed against each other, hardly an inch between them. 

“It's not an _exact_ ritual,” Deaton says slowly. “It's never been used for this particular purpose. It's been used to exorcise other spirits and beings, but never something like this being. I have discussed it with some of my contacts, and although there are a number of adjustments we can make to it that may increase its effectiveness...” 

“What is it?” Scott asks, getting to his feet. Deaton looks at each of them in turn, and the sadness on his face is plain as day.

“There's no easy way to say this. Even with those adjustments, it is possible that the ritual won't work. And if it doesn't, there is only one other option available to us.” 

“What is it?” Scott repeats, trying desperately not to focus on how dry his throat is. “Deaton, what will we have to do?” 

“If the ritual fails, the only way to stop the being is to kill Stiles and Derek.”


	11. i, xi: It

Only a single sunbeam stretches through a thin gap in the motel room's thick curtains. The beam crosses the room to the bed, illuminating the boy's bare, scratched feet. His legs are covered with a ragged blanket, but the rest of his body is on display. His torso is flecked with blood, stark against his anemically pale skin. 

It feels the blood drying on the boy's chest, just as It simultaneously feels the way the boy's skin yields underneath a set of claws. 

It feels all. Sees all. Controls all. 

Derek’s loft is a mere ten blocks away, only a minute or so as the crow flies. It has been a long time since It inhabited the body of a bird, so long ago that for a moment, It aches for it, aches for the days when humans were scarce, before they discovered magic, when fire was as advanced as they got.

The longing only lasts for a moment. In those days, there were no lycanthropes, and now that It has walked in the skin of such a beast, there's no going back. Humans may be viciously clever, with their guns and their knives and wonderfully complicated torture devices, but nothing compares to the feeling of being up close and personal, of feeling someone's insides slip through clawed fingers. 

It's _exquisite_. 

A fleck of hot blood splashes against the werewolf's hand. 

It planned on going after the other wolf next, the one that both the wolf and the boy, Derek and Stiles, hate with a searing passion, a hate that crosses familial ties. But It has a feeling that the others are expecting that move, so the plan has changed. 

That is the wonderful thing about being one's own master, of never being named or tamed by any creature; It does whatever It pleases, whenever It pleases. 

There is another person that the boy and the wolf hate: a mere man, old, decrepit and useless, foaming black liquid at the mouth. He will not be a challenge, but after all It has done, after the gifts It has left, It deserves a treat, something closer to home. 

It is waiting for nightfall. Then, and only then, will It exit the motel room. It will make the fifteen minute drive to a building that the humans call a ‘retirement home.' It will wait until things are quiet before entering the building and finding a specific room. Once it finds the room, It will slide inside. It will regard the man, the man whose wrinkled visage disguises sheer lunacy. 

It will use the wolf's claws on the man. The claws will tear the man to pieces, will rend flesh from bone until the room is positively swimming in blood. 

It will tear a piece of paper from the pocket-sized book that the boy has been carrying around. It will leave a note for the one the boy calls Scotty, the one the boy regards as his best friend, the true alpha who just barely slipped through Its grasp. 

After, It will wait, and if events progress in the way It expects, it will be time to kill Peter Hale. 

But that is for later. There is no point in looking ahead too far, especially since the sun still has miles to go before it sleeps- 

_What is that from is it from the boy's head what do the words mean the sun cannot sleep what a foolish notion_

For now, It will wait, and in the meantime, It will dampen the walls of the motel room with blood, soak the sheets until they are no longer recognizable. 

It will make the boy's body draw a razor blade across the wolf.

It will eagerly feast on the resulting pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~past me thought it was a great idea to include chapters from It's point of view.~~
> 
>  
> 
> ~~Current me hates past me right about now.~~


	12. i, xii: Scott

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter is also on the short side, so I'll be putting it up soon!

Scott spends most of the day driving from one end of town to the other, gathering books from Derek's loft, herbs from Stiles' bedroom and various supplies from everywhere in between. By the time he returns to the clinic, it's full dark, and Deaton has turned the examination room into a makeshift workshop. A drop cloth is draped over the main table, and there are old books stacked all over the counters; a few of them are already opened to particular pages. Scott drops the things he was commissioned to pick up onto the closest bit of empty counter he can find before turning to the others. Isaac and Allison are on a weapons run, but Lydia and Cora are back. Lydia has pulled her hair up into a messy bun onto the top of her head, and her face is set with grim determination. Cora is leaning against the counter, carefully turning a tiny jar in her hands. It contains the dirt Scott found in the motel's bathroom, mixed together with some of the ashes from Stiles' and Derek's clothing and some dried flecks of blood. 

“I called Erica and Boyd,” she says without looking up from the jar. “They said they're still keeping an eye out, but I think they're safe. I don't think that thing has any plans of leaving Beacon Hills.”

“Me neither,” Scott replies. In fact, he's fairly certain that the thing is just going to get closer and closer to them, especially if, as they suspect, Peter is going to be the next target. Deaton returns from the back room and rolls up his sleeves, glancing down at one of the musty texts spread open on the table.

“Lydia, I'll need your help with this,” he says. Lydia nods, but just as she steps over to the table, the back door of the clinic bangs open. Scott immediately whips around, but all it takes is one sniff to realize that it's Isaac and Allison coming back.

What's more worrisome is that he can smell tears. 

“It wasn’t Peter,” Allison says as they enter the room. Her face is red, and there are tears crusted onto her cheeks. 

“What?” Lydia snaps, whipping around as well. Cora has moved across the room to stand beside her, but Lydia brushes by her and pulls Allison into her arms. “Allison, what happened?”

“I'm fine,” Allison says, voice hitching slightly. “We're okay. But...” She sighs loudly and clears her throat so that the hitch disappears. 

“Gerard,” she continues. “They got Gerard.”

&.

Lydia and Allison stay back at the clinic because, as Deaton says, the discovery of Gerard's body doesn't change anything. They still need to perfect the ritual so that, when the chance comes to use it, there will be no mistakes.

They can't afford any of those. 

Scott, Isaac and Cora go to the retirement home where Gerard had been relegated after his attempt at becoming a werewolf went south. Scott's never been there before, but it's only a ten minute drive from Derek’s loft. It could just be a coincidence, but Scott doesn't think so; it seems that the thing is leading them back to the beginning, back to the loft. 

Part of him thinks that they should tell Peter that he's in danger. But Peter's smart, dangerously so; maybe he's already gotten out of town. They haven't heard anything from him since the last time he showed up to the loft, so Scott really doesn't know. For the time being, he also doesn't really care, not when there's another body that needs to be examined. 

Somehow, the sheriff has managed to keep things quiet; his vehicle is parked outside, but the lights are off and there's no ambulances waiting nearby. However, Allison’s dad is there, standing just inside the door of the building with John. 

“Scott, you don't need to see this,” Chris says as soon as they step inside. 

“Yes, I do,” he says firmly, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. “He's my best friend. I need to see what he’s done.” Chris clenches his jaw and nods, turning to John. 

“Are you going to be able to keep this quiet?” he asks. John sighs and takes a sip of the bitter smelling coffee he's clutching in his hand. Scott doesn't know how he's able to stomach it.

“Argent, I'm going to be honest with you,” he says, “I think you're the only one in this town who cares about this guy. I'll figure out something.” Scott leaves them to figure out the details and follows the scent of blood down the hallway, Isaac and Cora's footsteps echoing his own. The scent leads to the end of the hallway, and on the way there, they pass at least a dozen doors, behind which Scott can hear the quiet noises of televisions turned low and heart monitors beeping. 

Gerard's room looks much like the other scenes they've come across. Blood drenches the carpet and spatters the walls and the small window that looks out onto a tiny courtyard. The corpse is sitting in a recliner facing the window, and as far as Scott can tell, all of Gerard’s limbs are still attached. The only visible exception is his head, but even it hasn't gone too far; it's sitting in his lap, clasped on either side by his skeletal hands. There's a blue bow perched on top of it, clashing wildly with the wispy bits of white hair drifting around his ears. Scott tries his best to tiptoe through the blood and black gunk staining the floor, but by the time he reaches the chair, it’s soaked through his shoes. There's a piece of paper protruding from Gerard's mouth, and he manages to pluck it out without touching Gerard's cold skin.

“You know, I can't say I'm all that upset about this,” Isaac says. 

“Me neither,” Cora adds. "Not after everything that he did."

“I know,” Scott sighs, unfolding the piece of paper with trembling fingers. The message is longer than the others, and it's addressed directly to him. 

_Scotty, what do you think of our latest masterpiece? This wasn't exactly a challenge but still, the energy provided from it! The boy and the wolf, how they **hated** this pathetic old man. How could such a decrepit waste of space cause so much hatred? It's fascinating. I'm sure you know where we will be next. I hope you are ready._

Scott crumples the paper in his fist and shoves it into his pocket. There's nothing else in the room that's going to help them; the note has all the information they need. The thing practically admitted that it's going after Peter next, but it's just a matter of _when_.

He really hopes that Allison, Lydia and Deaton are having luck with the ritual, because if the time between body number two and body number three is anything to go off on, Peter could already be in danger. 

“Cora,” Scott says after they leave the room, “do you know where Peter lives?”

“I already told you, he's _not_ getting involved in this,” she spits. 

“We don't have a choice anymore." She glares at the ground for a few moments, arms crossed across her chest, before she finally makes a noise between a sigh and a growl and rolls her eyes towards the ceiling.

“Fine,” she huffs. “But if he happens to get stabbed, I'm not helping him.”

“Me neither,” Isaac adds. “Frankly, I don't really care what happens to him. I'm basically just here for you, Scott.” Scott knows that it isn't exactly a compliment, but nonetheless, it makes a rush of something warm go through his veins and straight to his heart. 

“Look, I'll deal with Peter,” Scott says. “You two go back to the others and let them know what's going on. We only have a few hours left, if we're lucky.”


	13. i, xiii: It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter after this one is much longer and is one of my favorites!

The low lamp beside the bed is on, bathing the motel room in dim, orange light that flickers every few seconds. The wiring in the room is laughably insufficient, and It knows that one day, one of the wires will break and fire will come bursting from the outlets. It knows that if It wanted to, It could start that process early, could use the wolf's claws to reach into the wall and make the flames come forth. 

But not now. It has far grander plans on the horizon.

By now, It has a feeling that Scott has found the body of the old man. It hopes that he found the note as well, hopes that he knows that It is coming soon.

For being a true alpha, he's rather inept. Even with the sheer power flowing through his veins, It is happy It chose not to possess him. He's too damn moralistic to do what's necessary. 

The sky is dark, and the night has begun. It's almost time for the final stage of the plan, the final stage before everything shifts again. It cannot wait. 

People are going to die. People are going to die _screaming_ , and It will bathe in their blood. It will soak up chaos and energy as Scott McCall, Scotty, the true alpha, watches his best friend be torn apart. 

It's almost time for that. But first, It wants one last rush of energy. Even though both of the bodies It is possessing are bursting at the seams with it, It wants more, _needs_ more. 

The boy's body is hovering over the werewolf's, knees pressed against his waist. The werewolf's chest is rising and falling, not marred by a single wound. If it weren't for the healing, It knows that the werewolf would be dead, would be drained of blood and ripped open. 

Lycanthropes. What marvelous creatures they are.

The wolf's claws are extended, gleaming in the light. There's a grin on both of their faces, a grin that It couldn't wipe away even if It wanted to. The boy's hand is wrapped around the wolf's wrist, pulling it closer and closer to the long line of his throat. 

( _the boy himself is lost in the depths of his mind trying so desperately to get out pounding his fists against imaginary walls and screaming but It won't let him out again will keep him in there forever will keep the boy forever pounding against walls and screaming his throat raw screaming Derek Scott Dad help me_ )

Closer. Closer and closer and closer.


	14. i, xiv: Scott

Cora and Isaac head back to meet the others at the clinic, while Scott goes to Peter’s apartment building. When he reaches it, he hears a whistle before he can even approach the front door. When he looks up, Peter is standing on a balcony three floors up, arms folded on the railing, wearing one of his ridiculous v-necks. 

“So you finally decided to come see me,” he chuckles. “I wondered how long it would take. How's all that business with Argent going?”

“How do you know about that?” Scott asks. There's no point in trying to deny it; lying to Peter has never worked out for them. Peter just laughs again and cocks his head, pointing at his ears. 

“I can hear for miles,” he grins. “Now, let me guess, you're here to tell me that I'm next on the hit list and that you're going to try and protect poor old me. Is that about right?”

“No,” Scott snaps and, for just a moment, Peter actually looks taken aback. It's a small victory that Scott can't help but cherish. “I mean, we are pretty sure that you're next. But we don't want to protect you. We want to use you as bait.” Peter stays silent for a few moments, his head swiveling in the direction of the retirement home, eavesdropping. 

“You know, Scott, I didn't think you had it in you,” he finally says, sounding almost _proud_. “Maybe you really do deserve to be an Alpha.”

“Are you coming or not?” Scott replies exasperatedly. There's no time for any of this; for all he knows, Stiles and Derek are already on their way. 

( _Not_ Stiles and Derek he reminds himself. Just the thing controlling them.)

“Yes, I'll come,” Peter sighs and, without further preamble, he nimbly swings over the edge of the balcony and drops to the ground. It's a flashy bit of showmanship and, if it was any other time, Scott may have allowed himself to be grudgingly impressed. 

“I'm driving,” Peter says once he’s gotten to his feet. 

“Fine,” Scott says, “but we're leaving _now_.”

&.

They arrive at the loft before the others. Even once Scott flicks on the lights, the room feels cavernous, and although he can’t hear any errant heartbeats, he still half-expects Stiles or Derek to materialize out of one of the vast shadows lingering in the corners. While Scott checks all the windows and the door to the balcony, just to be sure, Peter flips through one of the texts lying on the overburdened table.

“Do you know why that thing chose my nephew?” he asks. 

“We haven’t figured that out yet,” Scott replies. 

“It was a _hypothetical_ question,” Peter mutters, rolling his eyes. “I'm well aware that it tried to get with you and failed miserably. But Derek's _weak_. He's always been weak, Scott. Maybe that's why Stiles liked him so much. Maybe that's why-”

“Peter, shut up.” Scott’s vision floods with red, and he doesn’t try to reel it in, not yet. “I don't know what was going on between Stiles and Derek and honestly, I don't care. It doesn't matter right now. What _does_ matter is saving them, and the only way we can do that is if we all work together. So please, just shut up, or maybe we won't try as hard to stop the two of them from killing you.”

“I’m with Scott.” Cora's voice comes from the door of the loft, and when Scott turns around, she already has her claws and fangs out. Isaac's right behind her, followed by Allison, Lydia and Deaton, all of whom are grim faced and holding texts and jars. Allison has her bow slung over her back and a knife strapped to each arm; Scott is sure she has a few more hidden just out of sight. 

“Derek's the only real family I have left,” Cora continues. “So think about that before you decide to do something stupid.” Unsurprisingly, Peter doesn’t appear to take the threat seriously; a smug smile splits his face but, at the very least, he raises his hands, palms out, and shrugs. 

“We'll deal with this obvious case of family dysfunction later. But frankly, I'm not really that interested in dying again, so let's deal with this situation first. I'll just get out of your way.” He goes over to sit on the bottom step of the spiral staircase, and the others immediately spring into action. Deaton drops his stack of books off by the table and pulls out a small jar from the canvas bag at his side. He takes out another identical jar and passes it to Lydia before dropping to his knees on the floor.

“Do you remember the incantation?” he asks Lydia. She nods, hurriedly tying her hair back.

“Yes. I won’t forget it.” When she kneels down beside Deaton, Scott catches a glimpse of something silvery glimmering in her boot; a knife, he presumes. The next time he catches Allison's eye, he nods at her approvingly, and she nods back, giving him a slightly uneasy smile. 

“What can I do to help?” he asks, heading over to where Deaton is hurriedly drawing a rune on the floor by dipping his fingers into one of the jars at his side. 

“For the time being, the most important thing you can do is watch,” Deaton says, drawing a perfect circle in one swift motion. “Although we practiced the incantation a number of times, it will still take us a few moments, and we cannot say the final words until they're here.” 

“Until who is here?” 

Scott’s blood runs cold. He only knows part of the voice, and that part is masked by cruelty, by a mocking tone that makes his heart freeze in his chest. Part of him (most of him, if he's being honest) doesn't want to look up, doesn't want to look at who (or rather, at what) is standing in the doorway of the loft, but he slowly raises his head, trying to prepare himself while not having any real idea what to prepare himself _for._

It's even worse than he thought.

For the most part, Derek looks unharmed. He's standing in front, wearing too loose clothes, clothes that Scott suspects were liberated from Arthur Martinson's closet. His outline is slightly blurry, like how Scott imagines people look when you're incredibly drunk. He's already wolfed out, fangs jutting from his mouth, claws (which look even more vicious than usual) hanging from his fingertips. His shoulders are heaving, like he's just barely managing to hold himself back, and when Scott scrambles back to his feet, a deep rumble of a growl comes from Derek's chest. 

“Not yet,” the cruel voice croons, squeezing Derek's shoulder tightly with pale fingers. Behind him, Scott can hear Lydia and Deaton hurriedly inscribing more runes upon the floor, murmuring words in a language he doesn't recognize. Isaac is standing at his shoulder, and Cora and Allison are at his left. Scott can hear how fast Cora's heart is pounding; he can only imagine how hard it must be for her to see Derek in such a state. 

He takes a quick look back over his shoulder to see what Peter's doing. Unsurprisingly, he's still sitting on the stairs, absently examining his claws, heartbeat smooth and steady. With that image in his mind, Scott turns again and forces himself to stare into the cold, flat eyes that used to belong to his best friend. 

Stiles doesn't look human anymore. He looks more like a science experiment gone wrong. His hair is flattened out with grease in some spots, stuck straight up in others. He's wearing a ratty t-shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts that are spattered with blood. 

But none of that is important. None of that comes close to the reason why Scott is just barely managing to hold down the contents of his stomach. 

Stiles is _covered_ in scars.

More accurately, Stiles is covered in wounds in all stages of healing. His legs are crisscrossed with a thin web of them; the cuts don't look like they were deep enough to bleed, but they're an angry red against his skin, which is almost totally void of color. There are more on his arms, some thin, some deep, some that look like they've started to heal, others that have an ugly purple tinge that Scott really doesn't like the look of. Through the holes in Stiles' shirt, Scott can see even more wounds, all of which are a vivid red that _screams_ infection. 

But all of the wounds combined still don’t compare to the one on his neck. 

It's a long, wide gash, extending from underneath his earlobe to below the collar of the t-shirt. The edges of it are crusted with yellow pus, and the rest is dark red, nearly _black_. 

Scott doesn't know how Stiles is still standing, let alone alive. 

On cue, the thing controlling Stiles chuckles and tilts its head to the side, so that the wound is even more visible. 

“Are you admiring this?” It asks, running Its fingers alone the length of the wound. Now that it’s turned towards the light, Scott can see thin black lines spidering away from the wound, reaching like fingers towards the rest of Stiles’ throat.

Blood poisoning.

“It's quite nice, if I do say so myself,” the being says, squeezing Derek's shoulder again before dropping Its hand. “Werewolf claws are positively _delightful_. There are so many wonderful things they can do, Scott! But of course, you know that already. By the way, how _did_ you enjoy the gifts I left you?”

"Why did you do that?” Scott asks, ignoring the question. His own fangs are pressing painfully against his gums, but he manages to keep them retracted for the time being. “Why would you do that to him?” 

“I didn't do anything the boy didn't already want,” It shrugs, running a hand along the ridges of Derek's brow. “Admittedly, he never imagined anything this extreme, but the basics were already there, all in this brain of his.” It taps Stiles' temple and throws out a wink for good measure. “Now that's enough questions for the moment. I'm sure you all know why I'm here. I just want the one who shouldn't be alive anyways. I'm performing a community service by getting rid of him, don't you think?”

“I disagree,” Peter yells. Scott ignores him.

“You honestly expect us to just let you take him?” he says, attempting to stall for time. 

“Well, yes,” It replies. “There's no reason for me to hurt anyone else. Not today, at least.”

“That's not happening.” Scott whips around just in time to see Peter rising from the steps. “Like you said, I'm not supposed to be alive at all. That means that I'm not exactly willing to just give up my life. You'll have to take it from me.”

“Peter, get back!” Scott hisses. Lydia and Deaton start murmuring even faster, and the being chuckles, raising an eyebrow that is clotted with blood.

“Okay. If that's what you truly want.” It leans over to press a kiss against the corner of Derek's upturned mouth. “Kill him.” 

Derek unleashes a roar and bounds across the room, completely bypassing Scott and Isaac in favor of Peter, who simply roars back and meets Derek in the middle. They immediately clash together, dissolving into a whirlwind of claws and fangs. For the time being, there's nothing Scott can do to stop them; the ritual still isn't done yet. Instead, he turns back to Stiles’ body, which seems to be coming in and out of focus, his outline blurring and wavering. 

“I know what they're doing back there,” It says, nodding towards Deaton and Lydia. “I know what you're trying to do, Scotty, but it won't work. Better people than a washed up emissary and a teenage girl have tried to send me away. And do you know what I did to them?” It takes a few confident steps forward but just before It reaches Scott, It falters, stumbling slightly. It coincides exactly with a sharp yelp from behind Scott, a yelp that sounds like Derek. It's a mere moment of weakness, quickly covered up, and seconds later, the being is nose to nose with Scott. Its eyes don't look like Stiles’ at all; the color is watered down, as murky as the bottom of a swamp. Its breath is horrendous, and it's all Scott can do to not gag.

“Do I need to repeat myself, Scott?” 

“Let me guess,” Isaac interrupts. “You tore them apart.”

“Oh, someone's trying to be tough. Trying to stick up for their alpha,” It murmurs, stepping away from Scott. Behind him, the lid of another jar squeaks open, and the loft echoes with a resonating thud as someone slams into one of the concrete pillars. The smell of fresh werewolf blood grows horrendously strong in Scott’s nostrils. For a few seconds, It simply stands in front of Isaac, head tilted to the side, examining him like a specimen underneath a microscope. It hums softly and suddenly, quicker than any human has any right to be, Its hand lashes out and wraps around Isaac's jaw, squeezing so hard that Scott hears a bone crack. Isaac's eyes flash golden and, on Scott’s other side, Cora growls from deep in her throat.

“Should I tell Scott what's in _your_ brain?” It hisses. The longer It holds onto Isaac's jaw, the blurrier Its outline gets. “Should I tell him all the things you've been thinking about lately, all the things that have gone through your mind while you were lying in that bed together? Oh, that's a good one. I should _definitely_ tell him that.”

Before the thing can say anything further, Lydia screams. Scott whips around and ducks, just in time for Lydia to blow a handful of dark dirt into Stiles' face as Deaton finishes off the incantation. The last word he says is unlike anything Scott has ever heard in any language; it's a deep, guttural sound, and Stiles' body visibly shudders as It releases Isaac's jaw, leaving behind dark bruises the size of fingertips. A defeated whimper comes from the other side of the room, and when Scott looks in that direction, he can hardly believe his eyes. Peter is lying on the blood soaked ground, and there's a piece of metal (possibly part of the railing from the staircase) impaled through his stomach. His shirt has been torn to shreds, and his chin is darkened with blood more black than red. 

“Did you just _name_ me?” the being hisses through Stiles' mouth. Its skin seems to be turning ashier with each second that passes. 

“That's exactly what we just did,” Deaton replies. On the other side of the room, Derek growls and gives Peter one final kick before he turns, gaze settled on Lydia and Deaton. 

“Do you have _any_ idea what you just did?” It roars, lashing out again. Scott manages to catch Its hand before it wraps around his throat. “Your friend is going to die, Scott. I'm the only thing keeping him from collapsing into pieces. I'm the only thing keeping him _alive_!” 

“It's a chance I have to take,” Scott says quietly. He tightens the grip of his hand just enough to feel bone grind underneath his fingers, but not enough to feel it snap. Derek begins to stride across the room, his front spattered with blood, but before he gets anywhere close to Lydia, Cora and Allison move to block his way. Allison has an arrow notched to her bow, and even over the smell of decay and blood, Scott can smell the mountain ash. 

“Derek,” she says firmly, “look at me.” Although he doesn't stop moving, Derek swivels his head so that he's looking at her and, with that, she unleashes the arrow, jaw set. It goes true; it strikes Derek in the shoulder and he immediately drops to the ground, groaning as purple steam starts to spurt from the wound. His fangs and claws retract and his back arches in pain, fingers scrabbling at the rough floor of the loft. Cora and Allison don't move; they stay close to Lydia as Deaton repeats the guttural word for the second time. This time, Stiles' entire body visibly blurs, and when Deaton repeats the word a third time, a scream issues from Stiles’ mouth as his body drops to the floor. 

“You can't kill me!” It roars, dirt spilling from the corner of Its mouth. “I've _never_ been killed!”

“There's a first time for everything,” Lydia says. With that, she blows another handful of the herb and dirt mixture into the being's face, and It unleashes one final desperate yell. One last spurt of rotten smelling dirt gushes forth from Its mouth before It collapses into a heap on the floor. 

“Scott, brush that over here, quickly,” Deaton says, leaning forward and sweeping as much of the dirt as he can reach towards the circle he has drawn on the floor, quickly covering up the intricate runes that fill it. Even though he wants nothing more than to start examining Stiles' body, to check to see if he's even alive (because he can’t hear his breathing, can’t hear his _heart_ ), the ritual has to be completed first. He quickly brushes as much of the dirt as he can over to Deaton, and only then does he move, scrambles across the floor to Stiles’ body. Behind him, he can hear Lydia and Deaton completing the ritual while Cora checks up on Derek. When he risks a quick look backwards, she's kneeling beside her brother, turning his head in her hands. Allison is beside her, snapping off the end of the arrow. 

“Stiles?” Isaac drops to his knees in front of Stiles, bruises on his jaw still prominent. “Stiles, can you hear me?” Stiles doesn’t so much as twitch. Slowly, Scott shifts Stiles' head just enough for him to get his ear against the uninjured side of Stiles' throat. 

There's a pulse. It's weak and thready, it might give out at any moment, but it's still a pulse.

“We've got to get him to the hospital,” Scott says, his voice wavering and dipping. Hot tears are threatening to spill from his eyes, and when he clamps a hand onto Stiles' shoulder, black lines immediately appear on his hands as some of the pain running through Stiles' body goes into his own. “We have to get him there _now_.” 

“I'm on it,” Isaac says, fumbling his phone out of his pocket. 

“Just hold on,” Scott whispers, instinctively yanking his hand away from Stiles’ skin when a bolt of nauseating pain slams into him. “Please, Stiles, just hold on a little bit longer, we're gonna get you to the hospital.” With another rushed bit of incantation, Deaton and Lydia finish the ritual, twisting the cap back onto a jar that’s full of the dark dirt that had spilled out of Stiles' mouth. They immediately get to work on erasing the runes from the floor, and when Scott turns his gaze over to where the others are, he realizes two things. 

The first is that Peter is still alive. He's sitting up, leaning against a pillar that looks structurally unsound and, with a loud, wheezing groan, he yanks the piece of metal from his stomach.

The second is that Derek is awake. His skin is pale, seems to be getting paler with every second that goes by as more wisps of purple steam come from the wound on his shoulder. 

“Derek, we need to remove that,” Deaton says, standing up and rolling up his sleeves. “If you hold still, I can do it now.” Derek shakes his head weakly, sweat slick hair falling onto his forehead as he tries to stand up, legs quickly buckling. 

“Stiles,” he finally whispers, eyes desperately flickering around the loft. “Where's Stiles?”

Stiles doesn't respond, but Derek's eyes find his crumpled form soon enough, and the howl that comes ripping from his throat is, far and away, the most painful sound Scott has ever heard in his life. 

They've won. But it doesn't feel like winning. While Scott can hear the operator talking to Isaac, can hear her say that someone is going to be there in only a few minutes, Scott has a sickening feeling that those minutes are going to feel like eternities.

“Hold on Stiles,” he says again, holding his hand in front of Stiles' mouth just to make sure he's still breathing. “Please man, just hold on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when I originally wrote this story, I had it divided into three different sections. this chapter concludes section one of the story. the next sections will all still be posted in this story, but the chapter titles will be slightly different.


	15. ii, i: Scott

It's three o’clock in the morning, but the waiting room at Beacon Memorial is full of people. The room smells like every negative emotion mixed into one; despair, grief, anger. Scott is sure that much of the smell is coming from himself; it's been three hours since Stiles was brought into the emergency room and Deaton began work on Derek's shoulder back at the loft. The last update Scott got from them was a curt text from Cora, nearly two hours ago. 

_he'll be okay_.

That was it. 

Allison and Lydia are on his left; they're both asleep, heads resting on each other's shoulders, fingers intertwined. Isaac is on his right, and although he isn't asleep, he hasn’t spoken for a long time. His long legs are stretched out, and his arms are crossed tightly over his chest. His head is pillowed against Scott's shoulder and, for the last half hour or so, Scott has been running his fingers through Isaac's curls. He doesn't know how it started, but it's keeping him grounded, keeping him from getting up and relentlessly pacing. 

John is on the other side of the room, hands clasped in his lap, staring at the floor. Aside from exchanging a few looks, Scott hasn’t interacted with him since just after Stiles was admitted. He doesn't know how much John knows about Stiles' condition; he doesn't know if the sheriff is aware of just how bad the wounds are, how numerous they are. 

Scott wishes that he could sleep. He's exhausted, but he can't rest, not until he knows something, _anything_ , good or bad, about Stiles' condition. 

As the night moves towards day, the waiting room slowly empties out. By four thirty, it's just them and a middle-aged couple sitting in the corner, holding hands and praying softly. Isaac has fallen asleep, and Scott's exhaustion is growing with each minute that passes.

Finally, just as he's about to drop his head down onto Isaac's, the door of the waiting room opens, and his mom comes in. Scott leaps to his feet, which in turn wakes up Isaac, whose heartbeat suddenly and violently spikes as he jumps out of his seat. John doesn't so much stand up as he unfolds, moving like every bone in his body aches. 

“How is he?” Scott asks. There's a quiet stirring beside him as Allison and Lydia wake up as well. “Why has it taken so long?”

“Scott...” His mother's voice is raspy and weary, and her scrubs are splattered with antiseptic fluid and blood. Tears are glistening in her eyes as she clears her throat and turns to John, whose face is covered in rough stubble.

“Stiles is battling a massive infection,” she says. “There were over two dozen wounds on his body, and most of them aren’t healing properly. The fact that he's still alive at all is amazing, to be honest.” 

“Is he awake? Can we go see him?” John asks. 

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “He isn’t awake. His body can’t handle the pain right now. He's been put into a medically induced coma. It might help, but...” Her voice catches again and she swallows before she continues. “There's a chance that he might not wake up again.” 

Scott's legs give out. Before he can hit the ground, Isaac's arms wrap around his waist, keeping him upright. Scott just hangs onto his arms for dear life and tries desperately to not throw up. Behind him, Allison and Lydia are crying, and John’s face is completely devoid of color. 

“You're telling me that my son might die,” he says flatly. “That _Stiles_ might die.”

“Yes,” she whispers. The sheriff takes two steps backwards and collapses into the nearest chair, cradling his head in his hands. A number of words fall from his mouth, sentence starters that don’t go anywhere. Finally, he just sobs, deep, broken sounds that Scott has never heard before. Scott's mom kneels in front of him, and while Scott can hear her murmuring, he can't focus on the words. The whole room is getting blurrier with each second that passes, and he can feel himself slumping back against Isaac's chest, like all the energy has been drained from him.

Just before he passes out, he hears Isaac yelling his name.

&.

When Scott comes to, the world is quieter. He's lying on a couch in a dimly-lit room that he doesn't recognize. His mom is kneeling on the floor in front of him, brushing his hair away from his forehead. She's changed into a new pair of scrubs, but her eyes are still ringed with red, and Scott can smell tears on her.

“You passed out,” she says softly.

“I didn't know werewolves _could_ pass out,” he answers, aiming for a joke and not succeeding. He manages to get a smile out of her, but it doesn't reach her eyes. 

“You were exhausted.” She glances to the side, and when Scott lifts his head to follow her gaze, he realizes that Isaac is slumped in an armchair in the corner, asleep again. 

“He wouldn't leave you,” she says. “Allison and Lydia went home. They said they’d come back in a few hours.” 

“Can I see him?” Scott asks, slowly sitting up. “Can I go see Stiles?” His mom hesitates for a few moments before she nods. 

“It's supposed to be family only, but I think you count as that.”

They leave Isaac to get some more sleep. Stiles' room is on the third floor of the hospital, in the intensive care ward. Scott doesn't know how long he slept for, but the sun is up and the hospital is bustling with activity. When they reach Stiles' room, Scott's mom stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“If you need me, I'll be at the nurse's station. I love you, sweetie.” 

“I love you too.” She kisses him on the forehead before opening the door and walking away. It takes Scott a few moments to gather up the courage to step inside the darkened room. The curtains are pulled shut, and the television mounted in the corner is turned off. The room smells heavily of chemicals and sterilization, and there’s a strong, bitter odor underneath it all, permeating the air. 

It’s the smell of infection. 

There are two chairs, one on either side of Stiles' bed, both of which are empty. Scott takes the one facing the door and sits down, eyes hot with tears. 

“Hey buddy,” he says quietly. Stiles doesn't respond. There are IV's attached to his arms and a cannula in his nose. The parts of his arms that don't have IV's threaded into them are swaddled in crisp bandages that disappear underneath the sleeves of his shapeless hospital gown. His throat is wrapped up as well, right to his chin. Stiles' face is ghastly pale, so pale that Scott can see the blue veins underneath his closed eyelids. It's that tiny detail that sets off the tears.

“I'm sorry,” he sobs. “I should have noticed, I should have _done_ something.” Stiles' hands are free of bandages, and Scott grabs the one nearest to him, concentrates until opaque black lines start traveling up his arms. It's the most intense pain he's ever removed from someone, so intense that he nearly chokes on it, and he understands what his mom meant when she said _it's amazing that he's still alive_. After only a few moments, he has to yank his hand away.

Scott doesn't want his best friend to die, but if Stiles chose to stop fighting, he wouldn't blame him at all.

The door slowly creaks open, and Scott expects it to be his mother, telling him that he has to leave. But when he looks up, there's another silhouette standing in the door, taller and broader, one that he's all too familiar with.

“Derek?” he asks. Derek remains in the doorway for a few moments, backlit by the light from the hallway, before he steps inside and closes the door. He's back in his own clothes, and although his hair is messy, it's clean. At first glance, it looks like he's back to normal, but his left arm is hanging loose at his side, like he still hasn't regained feeling in it, and his eyes are haunted, like he’s staring at a ghost.

“He's in a coma,” he states rather than asks, and Scott is beyond relieved to hear that it's actually Derek's voice coming out of his mouth, not some cruel impostor.

“Yeah,” Scott rasps. “They don't know if he'll...” He can't bring himself to finish the sentence, so he stops and clears his throat. Derek crosses the room to stand at the side of the bed. 

“I did this,” he says after a few moments of silence, head bowed to his chest. 

“No,” Scott responds. “There's no way that you could have-”

“No, I _did_ this!” Derek repeats, gesturing at Stiles' body. “I don't remember doing it, but I remember...” He collapses into the chair opposite Scott and drops his head into his hands. Scott waits for him to continue, hand resting lightly on the bandaged part of Stiles' arm so that he doesn't suck away any more pain for the time being. 

“I remember waking up,” Derek finally says, his head still lowered. “It only happened twice, but the second time... he already had a cut on his throat, from _my_ claws.” He raises his head and looks at Stiles' face with watery eyes. Slowly, he reaches out and brushes a lank strand of Stiles' hair away from his face. 

“I did this,” he says once more. His hand drops to rest against the exposed skin around one of Stiles’ IV, and black lines immediately begin to journey up his arm. 

Scott doesn't know if it’s good for Derek to be subjecting himself to more pain when he's only just begun to get his own strength back, but he stays silent. He understands. 

For once in his life, he thinks that he actually understands what Derek is thinking. 

So, taking a deep breath, he mirrors Derek, silently removing as much pain from Stiles as he can take.

&.

The next few days are the slowest of Scott's life. He spends every moment he can spare at the hospital beside Stiles' bed, visiting hours be damned. He brings his homework so that he can study and keep an eye on him at the same time, and he eats more cafeteria food than he cares to think about. Whenever he can, he draws pain from Stiles' body, holding his hand until he feels like he's going to throw up or pass out.

Stiles doesn't wake up, and the pain just keeps coming.

The only thing that keeps him from simply collapsing into a heap from the weight of everything is that he's almost never alone. Isaac's been covering his shifts at Deaton's, and he usually picks Scott up from the hospital when he's done work. Outside of the hospital, they essentially spend all of their time together, usually joined by Allison and Lydia and Cora, whose relationship is far more complicated than Scott ever envisioned. 

Derek's at the hospital almost constantly. Even when he's not pulling pain from Stiles' body, he holds his hand, eyes trained on Stiles’ face, looking for some sign of movement. On a few occasions, Scott has come by and found Derek asleep with his head resting on the edge of Stiles' bed, almost on the verge of climbing into it. This never lasts long; inevitably, as soon as Scott sits down, Derek jolts back awake.

They don't talk about it. They don't talk about the possession, about the things the being said, about the people who died. For the most part, they don't talk at all. It's not as if Scott wants their relationship to be one of solely silence, but frankly, he doesn't know _what_ to say. He knows that Derek is probably ravaged with guilt, knows that he'll continue to feel that way no matter how many times he's told that it isn't his fault. 

So they sit in silence and draw more of Stiles' pain into their own bodies. 

His vitals don't change.

&.

It's after three days, three days of hardly sleeping, hardly eating, that an idea hits Scott; frankly, he's not sure how he didn't think of it before. Although he doesn't know exactly how it works, he knows that it poses a considerable amount of risk to himself. But that isn't enough to dissuade him; after all, when was the last time one of their plans didn't involve some kind of injury or sacrifice or risk?

And besides, even if the worst happens, it’s better than sitting around and doing nothing while his best friend continues to wallow in what Scott imagines must be pure and utter agony. 

He’s been sitting at Stiles' bed for nearly six hours, working on homework off and on, draining away more pain every so often, only moving to grab some coffee or when someone comes in to check Stiles' vitals and make some notes on his charts. For all that time, Derek has been sitting opposite him, only occasionally checking his phone or getting up to pace.

Scott swallows and clears his throat, pointedly staring at Derek until he looks up from Stiles' face. 

“How did you do it?” he asks. “When you saved Cora, how did you do it? Did you just hold through the pain and not let go until she woke up?” For the longest time, Derek just stares at him, expression impossible to read, and although it's a little unnerving, Scott doesn't let it deter him.

“No,” Derek finally responds. “I'm not going to let you do that, Scott.” 

“Why not? It saved Cora!” he protests. “It might save him!”

“It _might_ ,” Derek answers. “Or it might not. Scott, taking that much pain, not only will you stop being an alpha, but it might kill you.” He falls quiet again, brushing away a strand of Stiles' hair that keeps falling onto his forehead.

“It'd be worth it,” Scott whispers, hands balling into fists. 

“It should be me doing it,” Derek says quietly, and Scott doesn't know if he's responding to him, talking to himself or addressing Stiles. “I did this to him. I should be the one fixing it.” Even as he talks, continuing to brush his fingers back and forth along Stiles' hairline, thin black lines of pain stream through his veins. “You have to stay strong, Scott.” 

“What about the bite?” Scott's eyes inadvertently travel to the curve of Stiles' neck, which is still swaddled in thick bandages. Surprisingly, Derek doesn't shut the idea down right away. He's still staring at Stiles (like he's been doing for the last few days), but the expression on his face has changed. His features have softened, and Scott wishes that he knew what was going on in Derek's head. 

But just as suddenly as his face softens, it hardens once more, and he shakes his head, tearing his eyes away from Stiles' face.

“Absolutely not,” he snaps. “We can’t make that choice for him. If Peter had asked you about the bite, if _I'd_ asked you, if we'd told you what really came with it, what would you have said?” Scott only has to think about the question for a few seconds before he shakes his head and slumps back into his chair, grinding the heels of his palms against his eyes.

“No,” he sighs. “I would have said no.” 

“So would he,” Derek says. “I know that it's not what he wants.” Scott has a feeling that Derek isn't just guessing about that, so he doesn't question it; he simply stays slumped in his chair, staring up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the hard pit of despair and guilt and uselessness sitting in his stomach. 

Isaac shows up a few minutes later, his hair flattened down from the dirt bike's helmet. When he walks into the room, he simply nods at Derek. Derek nods back, and Scott can't help but wonder if the two of them are ever going to sit down and talk things over, if they're ever going to hash out the issues between them. 

“Ready to head home?” Isaac asks. Although the answer is no (like every other night), Scott simply nods. The hospital staff have been pretty awesome about letting him stay late, but he has to leave eventually. He's not sure when Derek plans on leaving; based on how’s he's settled back in his chair, clasping Stiles' hand between his own, it looks like he's just settling in for a long night. 

Maybe he just hides when the nurses come by. Scott wouldn't be surprised. 

It's only when they're halfway home, Isaac behind the wheel, that Scott realizes what Isaac has been saying for the last few nights. He hasn't been asking if he wants to go back to the house; he's been saying _home_ , like he's finally come to the conclusion that he's welcome there, that he _belongs_ there. It's a tiny victory, but still, it's something that Scott plans on celebrating. 

If they don't celebrate the small things, they wouldn’t have anything to celebrate at all. 

He doesn't bring it up until they're back inside. According to a text Lydia sent him earlier, the girls had been coming over to get some studying done, but even though it's just after ten thirty, the three of them are asleep in the living room on the air mattress that Scott's mom brought back from the loft. There are textbooks stacked beside them, and a few pens are scattered across the blankets, but they don't look like they're going to wake up anytime soon. Cora, who's still wearing her jeans, is nearly falling off the edge, her arm slung over both Allison and Lydia. It doesn't look like the most comfortable position in the world, but even after Scott closes the front door, she doesn't stir. 

“They look cozy,” Isaac laughs. Seconds later, he covers up a yawn. “I could go for some sleep too, actually.” 

“Me too,” Scott says. He's absolutely exhausted, and they have early morning lacrosse practice that they can't miss. But he has a feeling that tonight is just going to be like all the other nights; he'll toss and turn, fall in and out of nightmare, until the sheets are covered in sweat and the sun is starting to come up. 

It's only once they get to the top of the stairs that Scott decides to mention the revelation he had on the way home. 

“Isaac?” he asks as Isaac reaches for the doorknob of his bedroom. 

“Yeah?” Isaac glances back over his shoulder and buries another yawn against his arm.

“Do you mean it when you say _home_?” Isaac's face flushes, and he ducks his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. Finally, he just sighs and nods, still looking at the floor. 

“I do. Feels like the only home I've ever really had.” It would be a stunning admission from anyone's mouth, but this is _Isaac_ , who Scott is pretty sure wanted to rip his throat out only a few months ago. The fact that they've come this far, that Isaac now considers Scott's house a home, is overwhelming in the best kind of way. Scott can feel himself smiling, the first real smile he's had in days, maybe even a week. 

“I'm glad to hear that,” he finally says. “I really am.” 

“You're not lying?” 

“No. I’m not.” Slowly, a smile appears on Isaac's mouth. They have yet to really talk about things, about the obvious _something_ that's sitting in the space between them, but nonetheless, Scott feels like they're making progress. 

“Goodnight, Scott. I'll see you in the morning,” Isaac says quietly before disappearing into his bedroom, leaving the door open a crack. In turn, Scott collapses on his own unmade bed, kicking at the sheets and blankets until they're lying in a heap on the floor. He's too tired to change out of his clothes, and as soon as he rolls over, he's relieved to find that he can actually feel himself sinking into sleep. 

That relief lasts for all of an hour, when he wakes up with blood trickling down his chin from where his fangs have pressed into his lips. He's breathing heavily through his nose, and his back is covered in sweat, and Isaac is-

Isaac's standing beside his bed, bleary-eyed and sleep-mussed, holding his hands out like he can't decide what to do with them. 

“Scott?” he asks quietly. “Are you gonna be okay?”

Scott wishes he had an answer to that question, but he doesn't. He doesn’t know if he'll ever be okay again. Even if Stiles manages to wake up again, Scott doesn't know if there's any coming back from what's happened. There are too many questions he doesn't know the answer to, and thinking about them in even a cursory fashion just makes his head hurt. 

So instead of answering, he takes Isaac's hand and tugs gently, pulling him onto his bed. Isaac comes along willingly, but Scott doesn't let go until Isaac is lying on his side, facing him, head resting on one of Scott's pillows. 

“Is this okay?” he asks. Scott can hear him swallow, can tell that he's nervous by the sound of his heartbeat. “You don't mind that-”

“I want you here,” Scott says firmly. “I don’t want to be alone.” He rolls over, putting his back to Isaac, and reaches back until he finds his arm. Although it takes a few moments to get everything figured out, to figure out ideal placements of arms and legs, they finally get comfortable. Isaac's breath is warm on the back of his neck, and when Scott turns his head slightly, his curls tickle his face. 

“Thank you,” he says, squeezing Isaac's hand, which became intertwined with his own somewhere along the way. Isaac simply nods and, after a moment of hesitation that Scott can feel in the tenseness of his muscles, he presses a kiss to the top of Scott’s spine, a kiss so light that Scott isn't actually sure if he imagined it or not.

“You don't have to be alone,” Isaac murmurs, and although it isn't the first time Scott has heard him say it, on some level, it’s the first time that he believes it.

&.

Five days after they exorcise the being from Stiles' body, five days after they got him to the hospital inches away from death, Scott's mom tells him that Stiles' condition is finally improving.

“We're not going to take him out of the coma just yet,” she says, looking over at where Stiles is still motionless; Scott isn't sure if it's just his mind playing tricks on him or a trick of the light, but he thinks that Stiles does look a little less pale. “But the doctors ran some tests, and they said that it looks like the infection is starting to peter off.” Scott breathes a sign of relief and lays his hand on the back of Stiles' hand. 

This time, the black veins that climb up his arm aren’t as dark. 

“Thank God,” he breathes, looking across the room and flashing a quick smile at Derek, who gives him a closed-mouth one in return. 

“When do you think he’ll be removed from the coma?” Derek asks.

“It's hard to say,” she answers. “It depends on if his vitals stay stable. I don't want you to get your hopes up; it's possible that he might relapse again. But if he _does_ stay stable, then I'd say in a few days, they can try to bring him out of the coma.” Derek doesn't just sigh with relief; his whole body seems to react to it. His shoulders loosen, and he slumps in his chair as far as he can without letting go of Stiles' hand. 

“That's the best thing I've heard in... maybe ever,” Scott finishes awkwardly. He knows that it doesn't mean they're out of the woods yet, but he'll take any good news at this point. His mom smiles and leans down to kiss his forehead. 

“Finish your homework,” she says pointedly, nodding down at the chemistry textbook in his lap. “I'll be back in an hour to change his bandages.” Although the wounds on Stiles' legs have healed fairly well (although he'll have scars, they'll be very pale ones, at the very least), the rest are still in various phases of healing. Scott hasn't gotten a chance to look at any of the others; although the nurses are lenient when it comes to letting him stay past ordinary visiting hours, they won’t allow him to stay when they change Stiles' bandages. 

On some level, Scott is actually kind of glad about that. He isn't sure if he's ready to see what lies underneath them yet. 

“That's great,” Scott says to Derek once his mom has left the room. “Isn't it?” 

“Yeah,” Derek says quietly. His voice sounds like it's about to break. “Yeah, it is.” He abruptly gets to his feet and grabs his jacket off the back of his chair. “I'll be right back.” Even before he walks out the door, Scott hears a quiet noise, a muffled sob, fall from his mouth. For a few moments, he considers going after Derek and telling him that it's okay, that he doesn't need to hide his relief or any of his emotions. But that feels like it would be overstepping a boundary, and he doesn't want to mess up the tentative friendship that he’s developed with Derek. 

So he stays where he is and gets through two pages of chemistry homework before Derek returns. Scott says nothing about the fact that Derek's eyes are ringed with red and that he can smell the salt of tears clinging to him. 

&.

On the eighth day, the doctors begin to wean Stiles off the drugs that have been keeping him comatose. Melissa tells them not to be too optimistic; he likely won't wake up on his own for a few days, and there's always a chance that when he wakes up, the pain will still be too intense, and they'll have to put him back under. 

The lines of pain that Scott has been pulling from Stiles have been getting paler, and he doesn't feel so run down, so exhausted. He doesn't know if that has something to do with Stiles' improving condition or if it’s due to the fact that Isaac has been sleeping in his bed every night. Every night, only a few moments after Scott turns off his light, Isaac pads across the hallway and slips in beside him. When a nightmare wakes Scott up, Isaac's there to bring him back to reality. 

(They still haven't properly kissed, although Isaac has left a number of kisses against the back of his neck and, with each subsequent one, they're becoming more tangible, easier to feel.) 

But while Scott has been getting some rest, by the eighth day, Derek looks ravaged with exhaustion. Cora is in the same state; Scott has only seen her a few times, but she’s tetchier. She's snapping at Lydia, and it's not just the mock banter they used to have, laced with _sweetheart_ and sarcasm. 

Scott has never really understood the Hales, any of them, but he thought they were all getting better at the whole emotions thing. He'd thought that the fact that Derek had been holding Stiles' hand nearly non-stop for over a week had been a sign of _something_. 

Now, while Derek doesn’t let go of Stiles’ hand, his grip is looser. It's not like before, where he gripped Stiles' fingers like Stiles was a life raft, the only thing keeping him from drowning. Now, it looks like he could bolt at any moment.

Scott wants to talk about it. But he’s afraid that might be all it takes to make Derek let go for good.

&.

On the tenth day, Scott wakes up to a phone call from Lydia.

“Lyds?” he groans. It's still dark outside, and when he twists his clock around, it's just after four o'clock in the morning. “What's wrong?” 

“It's Cora,” she says quietly. “She's gone.” 

“What do you mean, she's gone?” he asks, wriggling out of Isaac's iron grip and sitting up. “Are you sure she didn't just go for a run or something?”

“We're sure,” Allison pipes in. “All of her stuff is gone. Her clothes, everything. It's all gone.”

“Maybe she's just at the loft,” Scott begins, aware that Isaac is stirring behind him, but he's quickly cut off by Lydia. 

“No, she's not,” she sighs. “That's where we are now. She's gone and...” 

Scott knows what she's going to say even before it comes out of her mouth. 

“So is Derek.”

&.

On the twelfth day, Stiles wakes up.

Scott has been aimlessly staring at Stiles’ heart monitor for some time when he realizes that the numbers have changed, that Stiles' heartbeat is speeding up. He looks over at the hospital bed just in time to see Stiles' eyes flick open. 

“Stiles!” he yells, hardly able to contain himself. He leaps up from the chair with such force that he knocks it over, but he manages to harness his energy before he sits down on the edge of the bed. Thankfully, Stiles' breathing tube was removed a few days ago, but when he parts his lips to speak, nothing but a croak comes out. His brows furrow together, and he swallows a few times before he manages to spit out a discernible word. 

“Drink?” Scott has a bottle of water in his bag, and he lets Stiles sip from it, holding the bottom of the bottle steady. Stiles nearly drinks the whole thing and shoots Scott a wide grin when he pulls away. The smile is all his best friend, and if it weren't for the bandages and the still-healing wounds, Scott would pull Stiles into the tightest hug possible. He knows that he should be letting his mom know that Stiles is awake, but that can wait for a few moments. For now, he's taking the time to celebrate the fact that everything worked; his best friend is fucking _alive_. 

For the time being, that's the only thing that matters. 

“How long?” Stiles rasps.

“Almost two weeks,” Scott says, finishing off the bottle of water. “Your dad said he was gonna come back after his shift tonight, but I'll go call him. Man, he's gonna be so happy to see you. _I'm_ so happy to see you.” Stiles opens his mouth again and makes a few noises, but after a few seconds, he shakes his head in frustration and uses his fingers to scribble in the air. Scott rips a piece of paper out of his chemistry notebook and hands Stiles a pen. It takes him a few moments to scrawl out a note, and when Scott reads it, his heart absolutely sinks. 

Apparently, the time for celebration has already come to an end.

_I'm happy too so happy. Where's Derek? Is he okay? _

Scott wants to lie. He wants to tell Stiles that Derek is standing just outside the door, that he’s completely okay. But the truth is that he has absolutely no fucking idea where Cora and Derek are. Allison and Lydia had been right; although there were a few articles of clothing remaining in his drawers, most of Derek's stuff (and all of Cora's) was gone from the loft, without so much of a note to explain where the hell they'd gone. 

He wants so desperately to lie to his best friend, because he doesn't know what the truth is going to do to him. But there's no point in delaying the inevitable. 

“He's okay. I think,” he finally says, not able to disguise the crack in his voice. “But... he's gone, Stiles. Derek’s gone.”

&.

As the days go by, Stiles slowly regains some of his strength. He still spends a lot of time sleeping, and when he _does_ wake up, he has a tendency to drift in and out of the conversation. He doesn't ask about what happened to him and, on his mother's advice, Scott doesn't offer up any information.

Stiles doesn’t ask about Derek again.

One day, while Scott is walking back from the cafeteria with a bottle of Gatorade and a muffin for Stiles, he hears the sheriff's voice coming from around the corner and he pauses, craning his head slightly so that he can hear better. 

“Has he seen them yet?” John asks. “Has he seen what's underneath the bandages?”

“Not yet,” Scott's mom answers. “We were hoping that most of them were going to heal fairly cleanly, but there are a number of severe scars. It's very likely that they're going to affect him deeply. We have a few therapists on staff that might be able to help.” 

“I don't know if we'll be able to afford that,” John sighs deeply. “I don't know how we're even going to pay for _this_ , let alone anything else.” 

“I thought you knew. Everything's been paid for. The medication, the private room, everything.”

“By who?” Scott knows the answer even before his mother says it. 

Who else in town has not only a ridiculous amount of money but also a fondness for Stiles?

Scott leaves just as his mother says Derek's name aloud, takes the long way back to Stiles’ room so that he doesn't run into her and John. Just as he reaches Stiles' door, he realizes that he can hear whimpering coming from inside, whimpering that is getting louder and louder with every moment. He quickly opens the door, and as soon as he sees that the hospital bed is empty, he tosses the drink and muffin aside and bolts towards the attached bathroom, which has light spilling out of it.

“Stiles?” he calls out, voice trailing off as he runs into the door hard enough to slam it into the wall.

Stiles is standing in front of the bathroom mirror, IV stand tucked off to the side, naked except for his boxers. His hospital gown is lying on the floor, surrounded by the bandages that are supposed to be covering his arms and chest and neck. He’s still whimpering, shaking fingers tracing over a large scar, still purple around the edges, that bisects his chest. 

The one on his neck is far worse. It's a wide, twisted line of purple and red tissue, gnarled like the root of a tree, extending from below Stiles' ear to the sharp jut of his clavicle, and Scott knows by looking at it that it's never going to heal cleanly. Stiles’ fingers carefully brush over it, his face red and glistening with tears. Finally, like he's just realized that Scott is in the room, he turns his head, mouth hanging open, on the verge of hyperventilating. 

“What happened to me?” he whispers desperately. Scott can't find a single useful thing to say, and Stiles sobs and slams his hand against the sink.

“What happened to me?” he screams. Scott can hear people running towards them, can hear their feet tapping against the tiles. But they don't arrive soon enough to stop Stiles from slamming the heel of his hand into the mirror, shattering it into a thousand pieces. All it would take is three steps for Scott to close the distance between them, to pull Stiles away from the mirror, to do _something_. 

“What _happened_ to me?” 

Scott doesn't move.


	16. iii, i: Stiles

Stiles has been staring at the computer screen in front of him for the past half hour, glazed eyes struggling to focus on the blinking cursor, corner of his lip sucked between his teeth. He glances back at the outline for the assignment he's been attempting to work on, reads over the requirements again and sighs, absently tugging at the thick blue scarf wrapped around his neck. 

“Two pages,” he mutters to himself. “I can do that.” He types a placeholder title onto the document before he switches tabs, bringing up a poem that he's supposed to read and analyze. The assignment isn't due for another month, but he wants to get it done as soon as possible. 

The poem starts out fairly ordinarily. It's not terrible, but it's also far from the greatest thing he’s ever read; Stiles is pretty sure that Lydia could easily write something better in five minutes. The basic themes are easy enough to pull out; it's obviously about heartache, about the pain of losing someone. 

But then he starts the fourth stanza, and as soon as he reads the first line, a cold sweat breaks out over his entire body. 

_If you'd wanted to tear my heart out, all you had to do was ask_  
_I would have given it to you,_  
_would have given you my heart and my blood and my skin and bones,_  
_if you'd only asked_

Stiles closes his eyes for ten long seconds, counting off each one as it ticks by, before he opens them again and looks at the poem again. There's no way that what he just read was real; he has to be imagining things again. 

But no, the writing is still there on the screen, black against a stark white background, looking completely innocuous. Stiles pushes away from his desk, hand coming up and fiddling with the scarf again, yanking at a loose strand. He's shaking, and he can feel a whimper emerging from his throat, and even though he tries to block it out, tries to force his mind to focus on something else, it's too late. He tries to make it back to his bed, but before he finishes crossing the room, his legs buckle and he hits the ground on bruised knees and-

he's back in a hotel room, a room splashed with blood, and his skin is warm with it, warm with flecks of blood bright crimson red and rust brown. Not all of it is his; some of it is from Derek, who is blazing hot underneath him, lying placidly on his back, hands pressed against Stiles' hips, not wincing away when Stiles drags a knife down his bicep, splits the taut, tanned skin, soaking the sheets in even more blood. He just growls, eyes briefly flashing electric blue, and his claws come out, pressing into Stiles' skin. It should hurt, but Stiles can hear himself laughing, can feel himself arching into them, urging them as deep as possible and-

suddenly the surface underneath him isn't a bed anymore, it's hard floor, and Derek isn't there anymore, it's just his dad, kneeling in front of him, yelling his name, and Stiles wants so badly to answer him but all he can do is scream, scream until his throat is rendered raw, until there's blood dripping down his chin and-

he still has those marks on his hips, white circular scars spaced almost evenly apart, spaced the exact span of Derek's claws, and Stiles remembers feeling the blood trickling down his stomach, remembers feeling a warm mouth lap some (but not all) of it up, and he remembers tilting his head back and fisting his hand into Derek’s hair, and he'd _enjoyed_ it, but no he hadn't, that hadn't been him, that had been the other thing and he had screamed and run and stayed trapped and- 

“ _Stiles_!” 

Like an elastic band, Stiles snaps back to his bedroom, back to reality. His dad is gone, and the room is considerably darker than it was before. Scott is kneeling in front of him, his eyes bright alpha red, staring at Stiles' face like he's trying to find him in the darkest of rooms.

“Scott?” he rasps, nearly choking on the thick taste of blood in his throat. “Scott, are you actually here?”

“Yeah,” Scott nods, eyes flicking back to their normal color. “Yeah buddy, it's me. I'm actually here, I promise.” Stiles wipes his chin off with the back of his hand, and the skin comes back slicked with crimson from his bitten lip. He doesn't know what to say, so he just lurches forward and wraps his arms around Scott as tight as he can, until he's sure that he isn't just a figment of his imagination. 

“How long was I... gone for?” he asks, even though pushing the words from his mouth feels like choking on barbed wire. 

“Two hours,” Scott answers. “Your dad couldn’t get you to come back, so he called me.” 

“Thanks buddy,” he says quietly, releasing his grip on Stiles and scooting away. His knees hurt, likely from hitting the floor so hard, and while the urge to prod at the bruises that have probably already formed is nearly overwhelming, he manages to resist. 

They probably won’t be visible underneath the scars anyways. 

“Anytime,” Scott says, plastering a grin on his face that's so bright that Stiles almost has to look away. “Did you want me to stay with you tonight? I've got some stuff I could work on. Could use your help for some of it, actually.” 

Stiles doesn't want to say yes. He doesn't want to drag his friend further into this shithole, doesn't want to drag Scott down with him. But it's _Scott_ , and he's always been incapable of saying no to him, so he nods and rubs absently at his tender knees, tugs at the scarf again. It's itchy, and it's really too hot to be wearing it, but he's not taking it off any time soon. 

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees, slowly getting back to his feet. “But only if you bring me some water or something. Throat feels like a fucking desert.” 

The rest of the night goes by fairly quickly. Scott heads home and comes back half an hour later with a backpack full of homework. That's how they spend the evening; Stiles works on a chemistry assignment (also not due for another two weeks) and helps Scott with a set of questions he completed four days ago. He steadfastly ignores his computer. 

He manages to get two hours of good, wholesome sleep before he plunges into another nightmare that he's roughly fishhooked out of, screaming again. This time, Scott is there immediately, practically leaping into Stiles' bed and wrapping his arms around him, not even wincing when Stiles claws desperately at his arms. 

With the last remnants of his nightmare still fresh in his mind, Derek’s name appears unbidden in Stiles’ throat, but he manages to swallow it back.

After that, he just sobs desperately, head resting on Scott’s shoulder, until his eyes and throat and heart burn.


	17. iii, ii: Scott

Three weeks after Stiles gets out of the hospital, he returns to school. 

Scott picks him up with his mom's car, Isaac in the front seat. When he pulls into the driveway, Stiles is sitting on the front step, dressed in baggy jeans and a sweater with the hood pulled up. His hair is a mess, his skin is ghastly pale, and he’s swimming in clothes that fit him perfectly only a few months ago. Even after Scott waits for a few moment, Stiles doesn’t move, and when he gets out of the car, he realizes that Stiles is shaking from head to toe. 

“I can't do this,” he whispers, staring down at the ground. “I can't... I can't hide it.” Scott knows what he’s talking about; even with the hood of the sweater pulled up, he can still see the scar twisting down Stiles' throat, trailing underneath the collar of his ringer t-shirt. Although it hasn’t been bandaged for a week, it’s still an ugly color, will _always_ be an ugly color, a combination of red and brown and purple.

“I have an idea,” Scott says, dropping to the step beside Stiles. “If you want to try it, we can. If not, you don't have to go through with this. You can stay home for another day, we'll bring you back the homework tonight. Alright?” After he details the idea, Stiles stays silent for a few moments before he nods, lip sucked tightly between his teeth. 

“I'll try.” 

When they pull into the school's parking lot half an hour later, Stiles has one of Isaac’s scarves looped tightly around his neck. It really doesn't go with the rest of his outfit, but it mostly covers the scar, with the exception of a little nib of gnarled tissue at the top. It seems to give Stiles enough courage to go through with the rest of the day; although there are a few moments where Scott believes that he's going to remain rooted to the seat of the car, he finally slides out and shoulders his backpack, giving Scott a nod. 

By the end of that day, the rumors begin.

As far as Scott knows, the story of Stiles having mono wasn't questioned while he was gone. A lot of people just seemed relieved, regaling each other with tales of how terrible the disease was, how contagious it was. Coach had made a number of smartass comments that had been infuriating, but Scott had just laughed and smiled along with the rest of them and grinned it out, because what else _was_ there to do?

But now, it’s obvious that the story isn't going to hold up any longer. Stiles lowers his hood when he walks into the school, and while the scarf does manage to cover most of the scar, there's still that niggling little bit of tissue that's impossible to hide. When Stiles cranes his neck in chemistry class in an effort to see the board, the scarf slips down slightly, revealing just a little bit more of the scar, and just like that, Scott sees two of the girls sitting on the other side of the room turn and start whispering to each other. 

“Did you see that?” one of them murmurs to the other. “On Stilinski's neck? It looked like a scar.”

“Mono doesn't leave a scar,” the other one answers, and just like that, Scott’s stomach sinks down below his feet, even as he barely resists the urge to roll his eyes and say _duh_. 

By the next day, the hallways echo with whispers and asides, all of them about Stiles. People that Scott has never spoken to before, that he's pretty sure don't even _know_ Stiles, are talking about his best friend like he's nothing more than a piece of meat, a specimen to be dissected and analyzed in the most minute detail. Scott hears all sorts of ridiculous things, some of which are _almost_ funny. Some people seem to think that Stiles just had some sort of embarrassing accident and was too ashamed to show his face for a month. 

(Given Stiles' past behavior, Scott can't dispute the plausibility of that. )

But those rumors, those almost innocent ones, are definitely in the minority. The rest of them are far more insidious.

By the end of day two, the majority of the school’s population seems convinced that Stiles tried to kill himself. 

On the third day, Lydia snaps.

It happens at lunchtime, while Scott is on his way to the cafeteria to meet Isaac and Stiles, who had class together. Before he gets a chance to step through the doors, he hears someone screaming, their voice filled with rage, with _pain_. It only takes a few moments before he recognizes who the voice belongs to, and he starts running, sending a text to Isaac to keep Stiles away from the library as he moves.

The commotion is coming from just inside the doors. Two girls are sitting at one of the tables in the main area of the library, a laptop open in front of them, their faces growing redder and redder with each second that Lydia continues to scream at them.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she yells, hands clenched into fists at her side like she's trying desperately not to slap someone across the face. “Do you think this is funny? Do you think it's funny to spread rumor? It's none of your damn business what happened to him!”

“Lydia, come on,” Scott says, lightly wrapping his fingers around her wrist. Other students are poking their heads out from between the stacks, and even a few teachers are showing their faces as well. Not one of them seems like they want to get truly involved; they all seem completely content with observing from the sidelines, and it's them that Scott saves his derision for. Lydia is still screaming at the girls, one of whom is on the verge of bursting into tears, but after only a few more moments, her voice gives out abruptly. 

When Scott gets a look at what the girls were looking at on the laptop, it takes every ounce of willpower that he has to not start screaming as well. 

He has no idea how the two girls managed to access the website through the school's strict WiFi network, but it looks like they were examining autopsy photos. Both of the corpses on the screen have injuries to their neck. One is more of a ring of bruises, a dark mottled purple against blueish white flesh, while the other is obviously someone who had their throat slit open. 

It's the third picture that makes Scott want to tear their laptop in half. 

It’s a cell phone picture of Stiles. It's grainy, but the top of the scar on his neck is clearly visible, and Scott realizes with a sickening jolt that they were _comparing_. 

He feels like throwing up. He feels like screaming at the top of his lungs. He feels like ripping someone to pieces and telling them to stay the hell away from his best friend. 

Instead, he swallows, drops his hand until it's wrapped tight around Lydia's, and holds his other one out in front of him. 

“Did you take that picture?” he asks, nodding towards the photo of Stiles. The girl who looks like she's about to cry nods rapidly and, without Scott even asking her to, hands him her phone. Sure enough, the picture is in her photo folder, the last one she took, only a few hours ago. 

“Did you send this to anyone?” he asks, thumb hovering over the delete button. She shakes her head, and with one quick jab of his thumb, the photo is erased from her phone. He asks her to delete it from her computer as well, and only when that is done does he hand the phone back to her, still resisting the urge to just curl his fingers into a fist and crunch the thing into a thousand tiny pieces. 

“It is none of your business what happened to Stiles,” he says quietly, the wolf making its way into his voice entirely of its own accord. “Stay the hell away from my friend.” With that, he turns and leaves the library, other hand still wrapped around Lydia's. They manage to get a few feet down the hall before Scott hears sniffling, and when he turns his head, Lydia's face is soaked with tears that just keep coming no matter how many times she angrily wipes at them with her free hand, leaving scratch marks behind from her nails. Scott's known Lydia long enough to know that she won't want anyone to see her cry, so at the first sign of an unoccupied room, he gently drags her inside. It's only after he closes the door that he realizes they're in Finstock’s office, and even though it's been so long since it happened, Scott can't help but flush at the memory of kissing Lydia up against the desk. 

“Lydia, what can I do?” he asks, wiping at more of the tears staining her cheek. Some of them are tinted black, presumably from her mascara. Her hands are wrapped tight around the edge of the desk, and Scott is pretty sure that if she was a werewolf, she would have ripped off a chunk of it.

“Nothing,” she says, her voice still raspy from screaming. “Nothing, Scott. I don't think there's anything that _any_ of us can do. They're just going to keep spreading rumors about him. What if they... Scott, what if he-”

“Lydia, don't think about that,” Scott interrupts. “We can't think like that. We just have to do whatever we can, whatever he needs us to do. Okay?” After a moment, she nods and aggressively wipes at her face again, making her cheeks even redder. Scott doesn't know if it's exactly the time, but he has a feeling that not all of Lydia's pain is being caused by the vicious rumors being spread about Stiles. Since Cora left, her and Allison have been quieter, seem to be clinging to each other even more than usual, like they were trying to make up for something that had been lost. 

Scott's not judging, not at all; considering his still unresolved situation with Isaac, even if he _wanted_ to judge, he wouldn't be in any sort of position to do so. But he needs to know if he can help her with something, if there's something he can do. 

“Have you heard from Cora?” he asks. Lydia shakes her head once, gaze focused on the ground. 

“No. Nothing,” she says, her voice firming up again. “And here I was thinking that she wasn't an asshole anymore.” 

“I'm sure she had a reason for-”

“Scott, I don't really want to talk about her,” Lydia interrupts. “Allison and I will be fine. It's Stiles I'm worried about. Has he said anything about Derek?” 

Scott thinks about the note Stiles wrote at the hospital, how some of his first words upon waking up had been about Derek. He thinks about the times he's stayed at Stiles' house and heard him screaming upon waking up from a nightmare, screaming Derek's name. He thinks of the fact that even though it's been awhile since the Hales up and disappeared without so much as a fucking _see you later_ text message, Stiles still has the key for Derek's loft on his key ring, a key that he fidgets with all the time. 

Scott thinks about all these things before he shakes his head and wipes another stray tear off Lydia's cheek. 

“No. Not a thing.”


	18. iii, iii: Derek

It's four thirty in the morning, and the sun is barely more than a glow on the horizon, but San Francisco is wide awake. The air is echoing with thousands of gulls squawking down by the waterfront, interrupted occasionally by a low, guttural horn as another ship comes in to dock at the wharf, a ship full of cargo containers or maybe people, tourists on some ridiculous gaudy cruise. Someone is listening to loud jazz further down the street, and cars keep whizzing by, approaching the steep hills like they're no more formidable than an anthill. 

It’s been a month since they first arrived in the city, and Derek knows he should be used to all the noise by now, but somehow, it seems to get more disruptive with each night that passes. He's never slept particularly well, always on edge, always with one eye open, but now he can't remember the last time he slept for more than two hours in a row, rudely yanked out of sleep by a blaring car horn or someone yelling down the street. 

If it's not the noise, it's the nightmares. It's been a long time since he dreamed with such vividness (since the fire, actually), but these nightmares are even worse than the ones he's suffered through for years. Maybe that's because he knows that, on some level or another, not all of them are straight up dreams. Many of them seem to be slices of memories, memories of sleepless nights spent in grimy motel rooms, memories of hours where blood dripped down his face and throat, of nights where Stiles

_(not Stiles it was never Stiles it was always that **thing** )_

cut into him with knives that dulled quickly. Some of the dreams are no more than flashes of color and pain, the excruciating agony as his chest and wrists healed and spit over and over again. 

It was one of those dreams, one of the ones that slide away from his head almost immediately, that woke him this morning, a mere hour after he’d passed out on the lumpy couch in the living room of the small apartment he's been renting with Cora. Mercifully, she's still sleeping; Derek knows things have been difficult for her as well, knows that she really didn't want to leave the town again, not after she _finally_ made a connection with someone. But she'd come with him anyways, for reasons Derek entirely understands. It's the same reason he would have gone anywhere with Laura, would have put her before anyone without question.

He should feel bad about dragging her along, but he's glad she came. He doesn't know what he would have done if he was alone. As it is, he's spent the last few weeks trying not to think about Beacon Hills, trying not to think about Stiles, trying to figure out how to move on from everything that happened. 

Running away had helped before, after Kate and the fire, but now, it seems to be having the exact opposite effect. Every day is harder to get through. He can feel Beacon Hills pulling him back like a siren, and he doesn't know how much longer he can resist it, even though going back is probably only going to make things worse. 

How is he supposed to face Stiles anymore? How is he supposed to look at such a beautiful person without thinking _I wrecked him_? How is he supposed to forget about the past when it's sitting in front of him, reminding him so graphically in the form of twisted columns of tissue and pale skin marred by wounds that will never heal, will never fade away? 

He's never hated being a werewolf more. At least if he'd been human, they would have been able to share the scars. But his skin has gone back to normal, shows no signs that it was torn open again and again, night after night. 

Derek only has the dreams to remind him of that. Stiles has to live with them every day. 

Derek doesn't know how to face that. He doesn’t know if he _can_ face that. 

“Can't sleep again?” Derek swivels his head just in time to see Cora pulling herself off of the fire escape and onto the roof. She's already dressed in a hoodie and jeans, like she's ready to start the day. Derek just nods and goes back to staring at the horizon, which is slowly starting to turn flame orange. She joins him, arms crossed on the roof's ledge, her hair a tangled mess. She's been taking classes at the local community college; Derek thinks it's just to keep herself from thinking about Beacon Hills. Based on how she's just as awake as he is, he doesn't think it's working. 

“Have you been thinking about going back?” she asks quietly. When he turns to look at her, she won't meet his eyes. There's no point in lying to her; he may be good at regulating his heartbeat, but he knows that she'd be able to hear the lie anyways. So he simply nods again and swallows. 

“But I can't,” he says. “I can't go back.”

“Why not?” 

“Because of what I did.” It's the first time they've talked about it in so many words; he doesn't know if it's genetic, but Hales seem predisposed to ignore their problems for as long as possible. “Because of what I did to _Stiles_. Cora, how am I supposed to go back to that? He won't want to see me.”

“You don't know that.” Sometimes, it scares Derek how much Cora sounds like Laura, so completely determined and sure of herself. This is one of those times. “You don't know that, Derek. You don't know what he needs. Do you even know what _you_ need?” 

He doesn't. Not exactly, at least. He'd thought that just ignoring the issue would make it go away, but maybe that's not true. He doesn't really know. The list of things he _does_ know is small. He knows that he spent nearly a week at Stiles' hospital bed, holding onto his hand, leeching away as much pain as he physically could, thinking about what he would say when he woke up, about how he would apologize, how maybe he'd finally find the courage to admit what he'd been denying to even himself for far too long. 

He knows that staying away for a month has done nothing to make things better, hasn't made it any easier to forget. 

He knows that he wasn't able to forget Stiles before, and no matter how hard he's tried, he certainly isn't able to forget him now.

“Just think about it,” Cora sighs. “If you wanna go back, I'll go with you. But if you're staying, so am I.”

“What about school?” Derek asks, a last grasp attempt at getting Cora to just drop the subject, to get her to sigh and realize that they can't just go back, it isn't that simple. Instead she just snorts and gives him a look that plainly says _are you fucking kidding me?_

“Fuck school, Derek. This is a little bit more important than some two-bit sociology class. Jesus.” She scoffs and rolls her eyes again before she steps away from the ledge and heads back downstairs. Derek listens to each of her footfalls as they hit the metal ladder, and only once he can no longer hear her does he go back to looking at the horizon, her words still echoing in his mind. 

He's just so damn _tired._


	19. iii, iv: Stiles

Stiles officially hates poetry.

He's been fiddling around on the internet for at least an hour, carefully ignoring the other tab he has open, browsing through random Wikipedia articles and YouTube videos. But no matter how long he browses, no matter how many fallen monarchs or scientific advancements he reads up on, his poetry analysis still doesn't do itself and, with a shaky sigh, he closes all his other tabs down, until there’s only one left.

He knows that he could probably get out of the project, if he asked. At the very least, he could probably convince his English teacher to let him switch to another poem, something different from the one they've all been assigned. But he won't. He won't ask, because he doesn't want to see the look on their face, doesn't want to see the pity show on their features. Even if it's just a brief flicker, he'll see it. 

He's become all too familiar with what pity looks like over the past month. He’s seen enough of it to last him an entire lifetime. 

He cinches his scarf tighter around his neck. It's more lightweight than the others, dark blue, formerly Isaac's. He'd relinquished his entire collection to Stiles (probably because Scott asked him to do it; Stiles is pretty sure that Scott could ask Isaac to throw himself off a cliff and all Isaac would say is _what time and where?_ ) and now, he switches between them every day, keeps them around his neck from the time he stumbles out of bed to the time he passes out, only taking them off to shower. Some of them itch more than others; thankfully, this is one of the more decent ones. 

He doesn't plan on ever making fun of people wearing scarves ever again, no matter how hot out it is. 

He manages to make it a little farther into the poem this time, but only because he skips past stanza number four. However, stanza six, the penultimate one of the poem, sneaks up on him, and Stiles barely reads past the first line before he feels memories emerging from the deep recesses of his brain, tearing at his grasp on reality like biting, clawing fingers.

_You asked and I gave it to you,_   
_My heart, that is. But what about the rest?_   
_What about my ribs, my skin, my very pulse_   
_You didn't ask for that, you just took._

It was stupid to do this alone. He knows that he should have waited until his dad was home at the very least, but that's still hours away, and there's little chance that anyone else is going to hear his screams, since Scott is still at lacrosse practice with Isaac. Stiles hasn't been to a practice since he went back to school; the first time he'd put on shorts, a few days after he'd left the hospital, one glance at his legs had been enough to make his entire body shudder with revulsion. He didn't recognize his skin, didn’t recognize the thin lines of white scars webbing across his calves, the thicker slices of purple flesh crowning both of his knees. 

He couldn't do it. He hasn't officially put in his resignation yet, and Coach hasn't told him he's off the team. Then again, Coach hasn't actually said _anything_ to him; he's given him some looks in the hallway, but none of them had been followed up with words, just a shake of his head. 

Of all the shit he's heard since he walked back into the high school, all the insidious rumors that thrum in his skull like a perpetual migraine, all the conspiracy theories, it's Coach's silence that makes him feel the worst. 

This time, he doesn't manage to make it off his chair before those dark, sharp fingers grab a hold of him and yank him away from the present. They seize him and pull him back, pull him back to-

-the preserve. It's dark; it's always so dark in the preserve. His legs seem to be throbbing, but it feels far away, like an afterthought of a memory or something like that. The front of his shirt is wet and sticky, and when he brings his fingers up in front of his face, they're red, drenched in blood. 

Derek is standing in front of him, shirt torn to shreds, drenched in blood as well, panting heavily, still wolfed out. His eyes are glowing electric blue in the dark, and lying at his feet is a body, or what may have been a body at one point. Now it's just lumps of flesh, strewn across the forest floor, staining the ground red. There are likely animals waiting in the shadows, drunk off the smell of blood, but they don't dare approach, not as long as Derek stays standing there.

“Good,” Stiles says except it's not him, not him at all. He doesn't recognize his voice, and his vision is cloudy, like he's looking at the whole scene through dirty water. He's aware of the existence of his limbs, but he's not the one controlling them, not anymore, and with each second that ticks by, it's harder and harder to even see what's going on.

“Shall we go on a journey?” Derek nods but first, he stalks up to Stiles, looking one hundred percent like the wild animal he is-

( _no he isn't he's not a wild animal he's not I know he isn't_ )

-and his hand comes up to press against Stiles' neck. His claws are still out, drenched in gore and viscera, and they prick at the already existing wound on Stiles’ neck. His chin is dark with blood nearly black and slowly, he cranes his head and drags his cheek along Stiles' and he-

( _no not him, the thing that's controlling him, the thing that I summoned because I was too fucking stupid because I was so damn scared because I fucked up_ )

-laughs quietly, recognizing the motion for what it is. This is better than It could have ever possibly imagined; It never would have thought that the boy and the werewolf were so impossibly tied together.

Minutes or hours or days later, the preserve vanishes in a single moment, and Stiles jolts upright, a scream dying in his throat, his chest heaving. His mouth tastes like blood, but he's used to that by now; it hardly registers as anything other than unremarkable in his mind. What _does_ surprise him is that he's not sitting in front of his computer anymore; he's in his bed and the overhead light has been turned off in favor of the lamp sitting on his desk. 

He's been tucked in. At some point while he was gone, his blankets were pulled up to his chin and straightened, although they're now pooled around his waist. Maybe it was his dad, but he doesn't think so. His dad has always tried to pull him out of things, even if it's only for a few moments. Scott maybe, but he's never done that before-

There's something sitting on his desk. It's a few pieces of paper stapled together, a fairly unremarkable sight, all things considered. But even though there are massive blocks of his memory missing, blocks that Stiles can only access when he's dreaming or when he reads poetry (apparently), he knows that those papers weren't there whenever he was ripped away from reality. Slowly, he gets out of bed, absently wiping the blood of his chin from his split lit, and walks over to his desk, looking around for anything else suspicious before he picks up the paper.

The first page is a title page for his poetry analysis assignment, complete with a snappy title that sounds exactly like something he would have come up with on his own. He quickly skims through the next page to find a thorough analysis of the poem, but the real clue is on the last page. There's a tiny yellow post-it note sitting in the top right corner containing two lines of cramped handwriting that, initially, he doesn't recognize.

_I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry. I hope this helps a little bit._

Suddenly, it hits him like a punch to the gut. Who else could it be? Who else would think that the right way to help would be by finishing his fucking essay? 

Derek, of course. Fucking Derek Hale.

For a few moments, Stiles is tempted to rip the damn thing in half or fucking shred it, but after he takes a moment to read through the paper, he realizes it _is_ a good essay, better than the one he probably would have prepared, more organized and less scatterbrained. It means that he has more time to work on other stuff, and the faster he can progress through the rest of his schoolwork, the faster he can graduate and the faster he can get out of this shithole town, get away from the people who think that he tried to kill himself.

So he carefully slides the essay into his English binder, cracks his knuckles, and moves onto the next item on his list, but only after he tears the post-it note into pieces so small that he can't make out a single letter of Derek's writing.


	20. iii, v: Derek (in retrospect)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as noted in the title of the chapter, this is a flashback, set before chapter one.

It's raining outside, not just a drop here and there but a complete downpour, like the sky spontaneously decided it needed to unload its entire stock of rain all at once. Derek's been watching it every so often, whenever his attention strays from the book in his lap. It's in Russian, a language he was once fluent in but that he's finding harder and harder to recall. The book is helping a little bit, but it's still taking him forever to pick through it. 

He hears the cursing long before the door of the loft opens, revealing a very pissed off, very wet Stiles. He doesn't even bother pulling the door shut before he starts taking his clothes off, still cursing through mouthfuls of wet cotton. 

“Do _not_ go out there!” he yells, tossing his hoodie and flannel to the floor. Derek can smell the rainwater dripping onto his floor, and it’s clear that it's soaked right through Stiles' tee. It's an ugly shirt; it’s an absurdly bright shade of blue and plastered with some kind of company logo, but the worst part of all is that it's clinging to Stiles' torso, tight along his broad shoulders and narrow waist. Derek sets the book aside but doesn't move from the couch. Instead, he raises one eyebrow as Stiles' fingers flit along the bottom of the shirt, like he's trying to decide whether or not to pull it over his own head.

“Can I help you?” he asks dryly. Yes, he'd given Stiles a key for the loft only a week or so ago, but that had been so that he could come and get books anytime he wanted instead of trying to reach Derek through his cell phone (which is nearly always turned off). He _hadn't_ given it to him so that he could just show up and start dripping water on every inch of his floor.

“Yeah, actually. If you have some clothes I could borrow, that would be great,” Stiles replies, his fingers moving from the hem of his shirt to the button of his jeans, and _that's_ enough to get Derek off of the couch. He doesn't need to see Stiles taking off his jeans and besides, he's pretty sure that Boyd left some clothes in one of the dressers upstairs. Stiles will probably be swimming in them, but it's not like they're getting any other use. He grabs the first two articles of clothing he sees (which thankfully turn out to be a pair of jeans with ripped knees and a v-neck), and when he returns downstairs, Stiles is thankfully still wearing his jeans and tee, although his socks and shoes have been kicked off. 

“Don't you have a dryer in this place?” he asks as Derek tosses the clothes in his general direction. Derek doesn't feel like telling Stiles that no, he doesn't have a dryer in the place (because with all the shit that has happened over the last few months, he hasn’t quite gotten around to getting one, but the coin-wash down the road works well enough) because he knows that he'll never hear the end of it. So instead, he scoops up Stiles' sopping clothes and carries them over to the radiator, spreading them out on the floor in front of it. He takes his time, and only when he can no longer hear fabric shifting behind him does he turn around, just as Stiles hands over his jeans and t-shirt. 

“Thanks man,” he says. Derek still isn't exactly used to this, isn't used to hearing Stiles speak to him without at least a little animosity in his voice.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, adding the rest of Stiles' clothes to the pile. 

“I don't like driving in the rain,” he says. “I was in the neighborhood when it started pouring, figured I'd get some research done or something. That a good enough reason for you?”

Now _there's_ the animosity Derek is used to. He just shrugs and heads back over to the couch, flipping his book open again. 

“Fine. You know where everything is. Help yourself. Just be careful with them.”

“Yeah, I know, don't fold them, tear them, don't even breathe on them.” Derek manages to disguise his snort as a cough and for the next five minutes, he thinks exclusively in Russian. Then the couch dips as Stiles sits down beside him, carefully cradling a black leather bound book in his palms. It's one Derek only vaguely recognizes, and after a few moments, his curiosity gets the best of him. 

“What are you looking up?” he asks, glancing sideways, finger holding his spot on the page. Oddly enough, Stiles stammers for a few seconds, and when Derek glances at him properly, his cheeks are flushed and his heartbeat is hopping along even faster than usual.

“Protection spells,” he finally mutters, not looking up from the page. “Just some basic ones. Deaton wanted me to practice.” Derek doesn't need to hear the skip of Stiles' heart to know that he's lying; he may not know a lot about emissaries, about the things they are capable of doing, but he's well aware that there are no such things as basic protection spells. 

But he doesn't call Stiles out on the lie. It's none of his business. Nor does he call him out when after a few more minutes of silent reading, Stiles swings his legs up onto the couch and slides his bare toes underneath the back of Derek's thigh. Instead, he just looks over with one eyebrow raised, glancing back and forth between Stiles' face and his toes. Stiles just looks up and shrugs.

“I'm still cold and, y'know, werewolf.” Derek is pretty sure that isn't a complete sentence, but Stiles does have a point. The last thing he needs is Stiles getting hypothermia on his watch so, balancing his book on his lap, he drops his hand down to the part of Stiles' feet that aren't buried underneath his leg. He wasn't kidding; his skin is ice cold and still kind of damp, and as Stiles makes a noise strangely like a squawk, Derek rubs slightly. 

He's doing this for humanitarian purposes. That's all. He steadfastly doesn't think about the fact that even after Stiles' skin has been sufficiently warmed, he can't quite convince himself to pull his hand away. He doesn't think about the fact that after the initial squawk, Stiles doesn't protest or voice any concerns; he simply lays back, continues to carefully flip through the book, occasionally wiggles his toes slightly. 

And when the rain finally slows down some and Stiles decides to leave, his damp clothes still sitting in front of the radiator, Derek steadfastly doesn't take a second to stare at the pale triangle of Stiles' skin that the baggy shirt exposes, doesn't think about how wonderful the jut of his clavicles would look if they were dotted with bite marks. 

He doesn’t think about any of those things. At all.


	21. iii, vi: Scott

By the time they finally finish lacrosse practice, Scott is actually starting to feel a little bit tired, even with werewolf stamina. But most of it has nothing to do with the repetitive drills they've been running for the past few hours, nothing to do with the grating sound of Coach's voice throwing out more and more nonsensical insults.

Most of it is because his mind has been focused on Stiles. 

The sheriff is working tonight; John had taken two weeks of vacation after Stiles had come home from the hospital, but then he'd gone back to work, although Scott is certain he only did that because Stiles somehow forced him to. And while his original plan was to tell Stiles that he was going to skip practice tonight to come over and make sure everything was okay, Stiles had shut the plan down before Scott could even voice it. 

“Scott, I'll be fine,” he'd snapped before jumping slightly, like he was shocked by his own tone. “It's... I'll be okay. Pop over after practice if you want. Maybe we can watch something.” To a casual observer, he may have sounded completely fine, but Scott had noticed the way Stiles scratched and tugged at the dark blue scarf around his neck. It was a tell he'd developed over the last month, one that meant he was barely holding together. 

All through practice, he'd been plagued with a nagging feeling, almost identical to what he'd felt when everything had started. Something just felt _wrong_. 

Finally, they finish up, and Scott takes the quickest shower he can, just long enough to wash away the sweat and dampen his hair. Isaac is right behind him; when he pulls on his jeans, Isaac is tugging a shirt down over his barely-wet curls, which have grown out long enough to nearly brush his eyebrows. 

“Is it Stiles?” he asks. Scott nods, swallowing heavily.

“Yeah. I just need to check on him before we go home.” 

“Okay. I'll come with you.” 

By the time they get to Stiles' house, it's nearly dark. The sheriff still isn't back from his shift, and there isn't a single light burning in the house. Scott knows there's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, but the sight still reminds him too much of when everything began, when he first found Stiles' house silent and empty.

But this time, the front door isn’t hanging ajar; it's locked firmly. The Jeep is sitting dormant in the driveway, hasn’t been driven since Stiles came home from the hospital. Scott feels like such a creep for what he's about to do, but he needs to be sure that Stiles is safe so, setting his backpack on the front step, he climbs the tree in the front yard and vaults himself onto the roof. 

As it turns out, he was wrong about there being no lights on in the house; now that he's right outside the window, he can see that the lamp on Stiles' desk is turned on, and his computer is still open. But he's not in his desk chair, which is lying on the floor. The sight of it makes Scott’s stomach turn, and he slides over slightly, craning his head so that he can get a better glimpse of the room. 

Stiles is in bed. He's fast asleep, blankets pulled up to his chest, scarf hanging loosely around his neck. Scott doesn't know how long that sleep is going to last before it's shattered by a nightmare, but he doesn't want to end it prematurely, so he climbs back down to the ground, where Isaac is leaning against the dirt bike. 

“Everything alright?” he asks, nodding his head towards Stiles' window.

“Yeah. He's asleep. Looks like he's been tucked in, actually,” Scott muses before shaking the thought out of his head. He doesn't know what time the sheriff left for work; maybe he did it before he left. There's no point in worrying about it now, so he sends Stiles a quick text telling him to let him know when he wakes up. 

When they get back home, Scott's mom is already gone; she's working the night shift, meaning that Scott and Isaac have the place to themselves. It isn't the first time this has happened since everything returned to normal (or something resembling normalcy at least), but for some reason, thinking about it today makes Scott's stomach flip in a way that is entirely different from what it had been doing earlier. 

Truth be told, he hasn't really given the whole _thing_ he has with Isaac any substantial thought over the past month. There's simply been no time; between catching up on all the schoolwork he missed and lacrosse and worrying about Stiles, he's hardly been able to remember his own name some nights, let alone anything else.

Even though Isaac still sleeps in a bed with him most nights of the weeks (except for those days where one of them passes out on the couch), Scott still hasn't kissed him. 

But something tells him that tonight might be the night that changes. 

“Do we have any homework to do tonight?” Isaac asks over his shoulder as he heads towards the kitchen. 

“Not that I can think of.” Scott knows that there's probably _something_ they should be working on, but for the time being, he can't think of anything in particular. That doesn't mean that it won't hit him at midnight that there's a history assignment he needs to complete but that's a problem for then, not now.

“Awesome. Do you want to watch something then?” Isaac asks, coming back out of the kitchen, tossing an apple between his hands. Scott doesn't know what the expression on his face looks like, but it can't be anything good, based on how Isaac's broad smile sags and disappears before he says, “I mean, if you wanna be alone, that’s fine too.” 

“Wait, Isaac,” he says hurriedly, reaching out and grabbing Isaac's hand as he walks by, headed towards the stairs. Isaac stops in his tracks and looks down just as Scott realizes that their fingers have accidentally slotted together. Scott can feel his heartbeat increasing and he swallows, trying to remember what he was going to say. 

“Watching something sounds awesome,” he finally continues. “Wanna finish the last disc of Firefly?”

An hour later finds them sprawled on the couch together with a (now-empty) pizza box sitting on the coffee table and Firefly playing on the television. Isaac's incredibly long legs are stretched onto the table as well, precariously close to an open bottle of Mountain Dew that Scott really can't be bothered to get up and close. This is mainly due to the fact that somewhere around the beginning of the second episode, Isaac's arm slid off the back of the couch and landed on his shoulders. It's still there, a solid, comfortable weight, his hand resting on Scott's shoulder, and it feels so damn natural that Scott can't help but marvel at it. Scott shifts slightly, moving even closer to Isaac’s side. When they brush together, Isaac’s heartbeat jumps, and his breath catches. 

That gives Scott the last bit of courage that he needs. 

“Isaac?” he asks quietly, tearing his eyes away from the screen. The show may be good, but he has a feeling that what he's about to do is worth missing a few minutes. 

“Yeah?” Isaac turns his head and Scott doesn't think any further; he simply presses forward and kisses him, and the sheer amount of _relief_ that comes alongside the action is incredible. It's a quick thing, hardly more than a lingering peck, but when he pulls away, Isaac's eyes are closed and his lips are slightly parted. After a few seconds, his eyes flutter open again. 

“Did you mean to do that?” he asks, brushing his thumb against the side of Scott’s neck, over where his pulse feels like it's going to leap out of his throat. Scott just nods, shifting even closer until there isn't a single inch left between them. 

“Yeah.” Isaac's eyes flick down to his mouth, and when he looks back up, a slow grin spreads across his face, a grin that makes Scott feel like he has made the best decision in the world. 

“Can I kiss you again?” Scott nods again and with that, Isaac surges downwards and presses his mouth against Scott's, fingertips pressing into his shoulders. This time, it's the furthest thing from a peck; it's the culmination of everything that has been building between them for the last month (longer, if he’s being honest with himself), and as he uses his tongue to brush over Isaac's, he finds himself sliding sideways until he's on his back, one leg dangling off the couch, Isaac a solid weight on top of him. 

He _really_ hopes that his mom doesn't come home early.

By the time the disc runs its course and the menu starts repeating the same few seconds of music, they've managed to flip their positions, although Scott can't quite remember how that came about. His shirt has gone missing, tossed somewhere on the other side of the room, and Isaac's hands are relentlessly roaming up and down his back, occasionally dipping lower to slide into the back pockets of his jeans. If it weren't for their ability to heal, Scott is pretty sure that Isaac's neck and shoulders would be absolutely littered with hickies and bite marks. With each new one that he presses into Isaac's skin, Isaac's nails dig into his back. 

But as much as he's having fun, Scott can only tolerate the menu music for so long before it becomes far too annoying; reluctantly, he pulls away, panting. Isaac's hair is an absolute mess, his face is flushed red, and he's smiling wider than Scott has ever seen. 

“I need to shut that off,” Scott groans, bumping his nose against Isaac's. “I don't think I'm ever gonna get it out of my head.” 

“I could say the same thing about you,” Isaac murmurs, and it's so unexpected that Scott has to take a minute just to make sure he heard correctly. Once he's confirmed it to himself, a grin breaks across his face and he swoops back in, reaching for the hem of his shirt.

Fuck it. Having the music stuck in his head is a small price to pay if it means that he can kiss Isaac more.

&.

When they walk into the school the next day, they're holding hands. It's not something they discuss; it just happens, so natural that Scott doesn't even really notice until he catches someone's confused stare and traces it back to where their fingers are intertwined. It's only the first of many stares they receive between the time they get off the dirt bike and the time they reach the lockers, and while Isaac tucks his helmet away, Scott takes advantage of the brief moment they have, free of scrutiny.

“Are you okay with this?” he asks. “'We don't have to make it public, if you don't want to.” Isaac just shrugs and gives him a small smile, slamming the locker closed. 

“I want to,” he says, reaching back for Scott's hand. The words are hardly out of his mouth when Stiles comes around the corner with Allison and Lydia. 

“Oh my God, took you long enough,” he says as soon as he glances down at their hands. The scarf wrapped around his neck today is forest green, tied in a ridiculously complicated knot that Stiles has shifted to the side; it covers every bit of the scar on his neck. “Lydia and I were going to start placing bets.”

“I would have won,” she says smugly. “Besides, now I feel like I can do this.” She reaches down for Allison's hand and kisses her on the cheek at the same time, and Scott can't help but snort when a freshman walks by and nearly trips over himself. 

For the rest of the day, the stares keep coming. Of them all, the look on Coach's face is the most amusing; Scott and Isaac nearly run into him when they turn a corner, and he looks from their faces to their hands and back again, mouth gaping open. Finally, he just shakes his head and throws his hands into the air. 

“You two better not break up!” he shouts, face flustered. “I won't have this affect the team!” 

But although the stares get annoying by the end of the day, even though Scott is sick of hearing his own name by the time the final bell rings, there is one good thing that comes out of it all, one thing that makes the constant whispers and occasionally stupid comments worth it.

People finally shut up about Stiles.


	22. iii, vii: Derek (in retrospect)

The next time Stiles comes by the loft, it isn't raining; it's a perfect day outside, with only a few thin wisps of cloud floating across a clear blue sky. Derek's been working out for the past hour. He started out doing push-ups and sit-ups out on the balcony, sun warming the bare skin of his back, sweatpants slung low on his hips. But as nice as the sun had been, the noise of the city had quickly grown tedious, no matter how hard he tried to block it out, so after he hit one hundred push-ups, he headed inside for a (hopefully quieter) change of scenery. 

He's on his thirtieth pull-up, using a metal pole jammed between two pillars as a bar, when he hears the elevator creak to a stop just outside the loft. Seconds later, the door slides open and Stiles stumbles in, just as Derek completes pull-up number thirty-two and drops back down to the floor. Stiles' hair is damp, stuck up in every direction, and he still has his lacrosse gear slung on his back. 

“What the hell!” Stiles yells when he finally looks up, shrugging his backpack to the floor with a thud.

“What?” Derek asks, looking behind him. There's nothing there and when he turns back around, Stiles has turned his back and is crouched, rummaging through his bag, tossing aside a few pencils and pens.

“Nothing,” he mutters, finally pulling out a thin volume that Derek recognizes as one from his own collection. He's ready to yell at Stiles for treating it so poorly but amazingly, it looks completely untouched, not a crease on the cover or a page out of place. He stands back up and hands the book over, and Derek can see that his face is flushed. “Just, you don't need to rub it in, y'know,” he continues, and if Derek didn't know better, he would think that Stiles was deliberately avoiding looking at him. “I get it, you're ripped, put a damn shirt on.”

“What?” Derek asks again. He can hear Laura's voice in the back of his mind, making fun of him for sounding like a parrot. “I'm not rubbing it in.” One of his shirts is folded over the back of a chair so he quickly sets the book down and pulls it on, trying to ignore the fact that his own face is turning pink. 

“Yeah, whatever,” Stiles grumbles, crossing the room to a stack of books Derek has resting on a metal chest, one of the few things that survived the fire. “Damn werewolves. It's not like you even have to work out anyways.” He continues his rant, saying something about the squishy bodies of humans compared to lycanthropes, but Derek doesn't catch the details, mainly because he's too busy staring at Stiles' back, at a strip of pale skin above his jeans where his shirt has ridden up. It's spattered with moles, and Derek just barely manages to tear his gaze away before he can start counting them. 

This is not good. Frankly, this is fucking catastrophic. There has to be something wrong with him, a succubus in town maybe, because there's no way he should be enraptured by the small of Stiles Stilinski's back. There's no way that he should want to drop to his knees and explore each inch of that strip of skin with his lips, maybe even explore a little lower. 

There's no possible way that his brain is thinking of these things without some kind of supernatural explanation. He doesn't even _like_ Stiles.

“Derek?” 

“Yeah?” He hopes that Stiles hasn't been calling his name for the last few moments; he realizes he's still standing beside the low table and Stiles has turned slightly, looking back over his shoulder, holding another thin book in his hands. This one has a golden cover and the title on the front is Latin; not Archaic, thankfully, just normal Latin. 

“Do you mind if I hang out here for a bit? Lydia isn't home and frankly, I'm probably gonna need some help understanding this.” 

“Do you speak _any_ Latin?” Derek asks. Stiles scoffs and rolls his eyes, getting back to his feet.

“I've been teaching myself. Lydia's been helping me with some of it but I mean... magic stuff...” It's hardly an understandable answer, but Stiles doesn't look like he's going to volunteer any further information, so Derek simply shrugs and nods, heading back over towards the pull-up bar. He's not going to stop his workout routine just because Stiles is around, but he thinks that he'll keep his shirt on this time.

“Fine, you can stay as long as you want. Just try to be quiet?” He realizes too late that he's phrased it as a question, and that in itself seems to go against everything he's trying desperately to deny to himself. Mere weeks ago, he wouldn't have asked Stiles to be quiet; he would have _told_ him to and probably would have received a glare and a muttered insult as a response. But now, Stiles just nods, flops onto his sagging couch and stretches his legs out. 

“Won't make a sound. Scout's honor,” he replies, and Derek can't help but snort because he seems to recall Scott telling him a story once about Stiles getting kicked out of Boy Scouts when they were younger for setting something on fire. 

To his credit, Derek is sure that Stiles _tries_ to be quiet, but he keeps shifting, yawning, cracking his neck, wriggling around like he's trying to get comfortable. After a few long minutes of this, he sets the book on the floor and turns over onto his stomach, crossing his arms on the couch in a position that does not look comfortable. 

“You need to get a TV or something,” he says. “It's too damn quiet in here.” 

“Don't you have a TV in your room?” Derek grunts. His arms feel like they're on fire, and he's pretty sure that his shirt is soaked with sweat, but he's two pull-ups away from an even sixty so he fights his way through the last two before he drops back down to the floor, which feels downright chilly against his heated skin. 

“Yeah, but I... never mind,” Stiles mutters, rolling back over and burying another yawn into his elbow. Come to think of it, a lot of the noise he's making is in the form of yawns. Derek doesn't think he's ever heard Stiles sound so tired, and when he walks across the room, he notices that, now that the pink flush on his face has died away, Stiles _looks_ tired too. There are dark purple bags under his eyes, and his skin is clinging tight to his bones, like his cheekbones are vying to press through his skin. 

“Stiles, are you alright?” he asks, claiming the end of the couch, trying not to sit on Stiles' feet. “Have you been sleeping?”

“Been sleeping fine,” he replies, the lie audible in both his voice and his heartbeat. “You? How have you been sleeping in this big, empty loft of yours?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know!” Stiles throws his hands up in the air and scrubs them through his hair, sending tiny droplets of water everywhere. In only seconds, his voice has gone from being biting and cruel to sounding like it's going to break in half. Stiles pulls his feet out from behind Derek's back and swings them onto the floor, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. Now that they're this close, Derek realizes that he even smells tired. 

No, that's not quite right; he smells _exhausted._

“I don't know,” he repeats softly, getting to his feet. “I don't know what I expected coming here. I'm gonna head home. I'll bring the book back in one piece.” 

“Stiles-”

“Derek, I'm _fine_ ,” he interrupts, staring at Derek with huge eyes. “Seriously. I am. I'm just tired.” 

His heartbeat betrays him again. 

This time, Derek doesn’t push him.


	23. iii, viii: Stiles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based on the sheer length of this chapter, I'm sure you can tell that it was my favorite back when I originally wrote this...
> 
> I've finished editing this story, so expect the last three chapters to be put up in quick succession!
> 
> **warning** for some brief suicidal ideation.

Stiles didn't plan on doing this. Not tonight, at least, although the idea has been floating around his head since he'd woken up to discover the paper Derek had written for him sitting on his desk. 

Well, that's not entirely truthful. That night, Stiles had been too angry to think about much of anything, because just when he was getting used to having a hole in his life, just when he was getting used to the fact that Derek was actually gone, had fucked off for good, the bastard came back. He came back and tried to be fucking _helpful_.

All Stiles could think was _how dare he_. How dare he just screw off without even so much as a goodbye and then return and expect things to be normal again?

Fuck. That.

He hasn't heard from Derek at all since then and truthfully, he's starting to wonder if he just hallucinated the entire thing. Maybe he somehow just managed to write the paper all on his own without remembering it; it certainly wouldn't the weirdest thing that's happened to him. 

But even in his dreamland, he's pretty sure that he couldn’t forge Derek's handwriting.

He lets the idea stew for two whole weeks and over those two weeks, things actually... well, they don't necessarily get better; Stiles doesn't think things will _ever_ really get better, not so long as he stays in Beacon Hills. But it's been easier to cope. The nightmares come and go as they please, but they seem to be departing more often than they arrive, and even the insidious rumors have calmed down slightly. The gossip mill has moved onto other topics; mainly, it's moved on to whispering about Scott and Isaac or Allison and Lydia. Although Stiles had been happy that his friends had finally broken down and stopped trying to hide shit from each other (because he'd known that Scott and Isaac had a thing for each other for _months_ and Allison and Lydia... well, they were always each other's number ones), he also had a feeling that one of the main reasons they’d finally gone public was to try and silence those damn voices that followed him everywhere. 

To their credit, it mostly worked; people still said stupid shit about him and every so often, he could see Scott tense up and clench his jaw, like he'd just caught a snippet of conversation with his werewolf hearing, but they didn't talk nearly as much as they used to. It's been a few days since someone said something to his face, and it’s been over a week since some fucking meathead had tried to pull the scarf off his neck, all because _he'd never seen what a slit throat looked like._

Stiles had managed to quip, “Neither have I,” which was, technically speaking, the truth. His throat hadn't been slit after all, just torn open over and over again. But the quip had come out in a voice more waver than anything. If it had been two months ago, he would have been able to say a few words to make the guy fuck off, would have had some herb in his pocket that could have made the asshole forget what he was doing in the first place. 

But Stiles hasn’t done magic of any kind since he came home from the hospital. The mere thought of it makes his skin crawl and his head pound and his stomach churn. He’s very thankful that the magic texts and the herbs he'd been practicing with were removed from his bedroom by Deaton and the others; he doesn’t think he has it in him to touch them. 

But back to the idea. He hasn’t heard anything further from Derek, and as the days of silence keep ticking by, it becomes more and more clear that there’s something he needs to find.

Closure. 

Sure, it isn’t going to solve everything (or anything, really, if he’s being honest with himself), but at the very least, he needs to see if Derek is still in town, see if he’s run away again (because if there was one thing Derek Hale is good at, it’s running away, Stiles knows that like he knows his own name). At the very least, if he isn’t in town anymore, Stiles can rest with that knowledge. 

He understands that Derek probably needs some time to himself; Stiles can’t fault him for that. But it’s one thing to need some time to yourself to try and figure out what in the fuck happened to you; it’s another thing entirely to screw off without a word to anyone, without even leaving behind a quick _sayanora, guys_ note. 

Even though the urge for closure itches more and more each day, he waits for a day where everyone is guaranteed to be busy to put his plan into action. His dad is at work, and his friends are all at a lacrosse game, either playing or watching. Just after six, he steps out of the house, bundled up in an overshirt and a hoodie. His scarf of the day is forest green, and his hair brushes against it with every movement of his head. It’s starting to get way too long, but there’s no way that he’s going to go to a hairdresser and get looked at like a sideshow freak. 

Besides, how hard can it be to cut your own hair? 

The Jeep is still parked in the driveway; it hasn’t moved since he came home from the hospital, and he doesn’t even know if there’s any gas in the tank, let alone if the thing will start. He glances down into his left hand, where he’s clenching his key ring so tightly that it’s leaving red indents in his flesh. The key to Derek's loft is still there, right beside the key for the Jeep. He’s thought about ripping it off a few times, throwing it into the trash or into a river but now, he's glad he decided not to go that route. Sighing, he slides into the driver's seat, says a quick prayer and twists the key in the ignition.

Remarkably, the Jeep starts after only a few moments of spluttering, but he stays still for a moment, fingers lingering on the gear shift. It's been so long since he drove that he wants to make sure he remembers everything; the last thing he needs is to be out on the roads and forget how to brake when a deer leaps into his way. But thankfully, that particular part of his brain seems to be fully intact, so he slowly backs out of the driveway.

It takes him twenty minutes to get to the loft (which used to be an eight minute drive at best) and he pulls into an empty spot, staring up at the building. It's always looked so damn decrepit, like it's going to fall down at any moment, and he can't help but chuckle. 

It's a building perfectly suited for him then. 

The key gets him into the building, and since it looks like the elevator is fucking broken (again), he slowly starts making his way up the stairs, uncertainty and doubt grow stronger and stronger with each step he takes. Although he's still glad that he said _no_ to Peter (way back when, so long ago that it feels like another life), it's times like this that he wishes he was a werewolf, so that he could listen and see if there's anyone awaiting him, see if he's about to walk into another trap or if he's just going to walk into an empty loft, full of horrid half-memories that he might not be ready to confront yet.

He doesn't remember the stairs taking so damn long to climb but then again, the last time he climbed them, there was a malevolent being in full control of his body. Finally, he reaches the top, and the door of the loft looms like a cliff in front of him, the only thing left between him and some damn closure. 

It's not too late to turn around. It's not too late to go back down the stairs (all six dozen of them) and get back into the Jeep. He could be back home before anyone even knew he was gone. 

Taking a deep breath, he yanks the door of the loft open and steps inside before he can even think about losing his nerve again. 

Unsurprisingly, the loft is empty; it's what he expected, but his stomach still sinks a little bit. The place looks like it's been undisturbed for weeks; there are still a bunch of books piled up on the nearest table, cracked open in ways that are undoubtedly wrecking the spines, and Stiles can just hear Derek groaning in the back of his mind. The floor is still covered in debris; right underneath his feet, there's a wide, slightly faded dark stain. There are others scattered around the general vicinity, and Stiles knows without investigating further that they're blood. He steps away from the one he's standing on and takes a few tentative steps further into the room, glancing around for any sign that things have changed at all.

He's never liked being in the loft alone, even for a few moments when Derek took off to do something or another; the place is just too big, too open and wide for one person to be comfortable in. It's seen so much chaos, seen darachs and alpha werewolves coming out of nowhere, seemingly appearing out of the shadows themselves. 

He realizes just as he reaches the massive window on the opposite side of the room that _he's_ one of those shadows now, one of those agents of chaos that invaded Derek’s home. The urge to slam his fist through one of the panes of glass washes over him, but he manages to resist; he doesn't want to add even more thin white scars to his right hand, nor does he want to destroy Derek's home even further, even if the guy never comes back to it.

He shouldn't even be here. This was a stupid fucking idea. Obviously, no one's home and just standing in an empty room seeing all the shit he did isn't going to give him any damn closure. The side of his neck aches, although that's probably more psychosomatic than anything. Even if Derek _was_ here, why would he want to see Stiles? He wouldn't, of course; he'd probably just give him the same pitying stare everyone else has given him, the stare that says that they all see him as nothing more than the scars now, a patchwork of wounds and tissue that's lucky to even be standing. 

He can't deal with that. Not from Derek. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, hardly aware he's saying it as he turns and makes his way back across the room, carefully stepping around each of the stains on the floor. He hears a creak behind him, but he doesn't think it's anything more than the wind pushing against the window. He wonders if Derek is paying the rent on this place still or if someone else is going to take it over. 

Holy shit, did he just break into someone else's apartment? 

“Stiles?” It's hardly louder than a whisper, but Stiles hears it. He whips around and for a few seconds, he thinks that maybe he imagined that too, because there's no one behind him. But then he hears the creak again, just in time to see Derek descending the stairs, his face impossible to read (mainly because it doesn't look like he's shaved the entire time he was gone). He's wearing a leather jacket and still has his wallet in his hands, like he was just about to go somewhere. 

How lost in thought did he have to be to not hear Stiles come in? It's not like he's quiet after all; if there's one thing Stiles remembers about his visits to Derek's loft before everything went down, he remembers him constantly complaining about how loud he was. Even when he was doing something as simple as sitting on the sofa, Derek would complain about his yawning or his shifting. 

“Stiles, what are you doing here?” he asks, reaching the bottom of the steps. It's only now that Stiles realizes that one of the railings for the stairs has been ripped away, leaving a jagged stump of metal behind. He can only imagine what happened to it and he looks away, forces himself to stare at Derek's feet instead. 

“Could ask you the same thing,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady. “How long have you been skulking around for? Did you even leave at all?” 

“Yes,” Derek says, making no move to close to the distance between them. “I did. We did. I've been back for a few weeks. Didn't you get the paper?”

“Yeah, I got the paper. Thought about ripping it up, actually.” Finally, an identifiable emotion flashes across Derek's face, and Stiles feels a little bit of relief. At least an emotion means that Derek is still human (or as close to human as he was in the first place). 

“Why?” 

“Why do you think?” Stiles snorts, turning his back and going over to the table, still overloaded with books. Truth be told, he's surprised that the legs haven't collapsed in the time that's passed; for someone who is apparently rich enough to pay all of his hospital bills (something no one told him to his face, but that he'd overheard his dad and Melissa talking about), Derek's furniture is pretty shitty. 

“I was trying to help,” Derek says, his voice firm and flat, all signs of emotion gone again, and even though Stiles hadn't been planning on looking at him, he can't help but whip around again, feeling a surge of anger flood through him. It makes his scars itch, and he has to try very hard not to pick at the scarf around his neck. 

“You were just trying to _help_?” he throws back, knowing he sounds cruel and mocking but not caring enough to rein himself in. “By writing a _paper_ for me? You honestly thought _that_ was the best way to help?”

“What else did you want me to do, Stiles?” Derek yells. “What else could I have done? I wrote a paper for you, I paid your hospital bills, I stayed in the hospital with Scott and we took your pain away every damn day. Did anyone bother to tell you that?” 

“Why weren't you there when I woke up?” Stiles yells, letting his hand fall off of the table, barely aware that he's stepping closer to Derek. “Do you know what the first thing I wrote when I woke up was? I asked about _you_! All I wanted to know was if you were okay or not and you weren't there!”

“I didn't know what else to do!” Derek drops his wallet to the floor. His fingers are digging into his palm, like he's trying not to punch the nearest pillar. A few of them have massive cracks in them; Stiles is sure that one punch from a werewolf is all it would take to bring the ceiling down on them. 

Maybe that would be a good thing. 

“And you think that _I_ did?” Stiles just sighs and throws his hands into the air. “Why did you even come back, Derek? I was _just_ beginning to get used to you being gone and then you show up again, thinking you're some kind of big hero 'cause you finished a paper for me. Well, fuck _you_. You should have stayed gone.” He doesn't mean it, not really, but he can't do this conversation anymore. It's not that he was expecting things to just solve themselves, but he also wasn't expecting to be filled with this much _pain_ at the mere sight of Derek. 

“I shouldn't have come here,” he mutters, turning towards the door.

“You are not just leaving,” Derek says, and Stiles has no idea when they got so close, but Derek doesn't even have to move in order to drop his hand onto Stiles' shoulder. “We are going to _talk_ about this.”

“Screw you,” Stiles hisses, slapping at Derek's arm. The move must catch Derek by surprise because his arm actually moves by a fraction of an inch. When he reaches back, his fingers snag on the scarf wrapped around Stiles’ neck, and even as Stiles feels his stomach dropping, even as he feel panic racing through his veins, it's too late. By the time he manages to make his hands obey him, the scarf is already gone, hanging loosely from Derek's fingers. His eyes are locked onto the scar on the side of Stiles' neck, and just like that, all of the anger drains out of his face, along with some of the color. 

“Stiles,” he starts, but the sentence doesn't go anywhere. The scarf drops from his hands, and Stiles wants so desperately to move, but he can't. The longer Derek stares at him, the more his neck itches, and his fingers twitch at his sides. 

“I didn't know,” Derek finally says. “I didn't know it was that bad.” 

“Yeah, you didn't,” Stiles snaps. Just pushing the words out of his mouth takes a tremendous amount of effort. He's so damned _tired_ all of a sudden, like every one of his limbs has been individually stricken with exhaustion. Yet at the same time, anger thrums through his veins, because the look on Derek's face is exactly what he expected it to be; it's _pity_ and frankly, looking at it makes him a little sick. 

“You may have been there while I was asleep, and you know what, I never got a chance to thank you for that. So thank you, I mean it. But you left before the hard part started, Derek. You didn't have to look at _this_ every day,” he hisses, gesturing at the wound on his neck. With each movement he makes, he can feel the malformed tissue moving, out of sync with the rest of his skin. An idea hits him suddenly, and he doesn't bother questioning the logic of it, even though he knows he's going to regret it in only a few minutes. But a few minutes seems so far away, so he unzips his hoodie and drops it to the floor, fingers fumbling over the buttons on his overshirt. It joins his hoodie on the ground seconds later, and he only hesitates for a moment before he yanks his t-shirt over his head. 

He holds his arms out and does a slow circle, making sure that Derek has enough time to look at all the scars that riddle his torso; the long line of ragged white tissue that bisects his rib cage, the smaller, circular dots on his hips, spaced apart the same distance as Derek's claws, the long lines that loop and spiral down his biceps. 

“You didn't have to deal with any of this,” he says quietly, letting his arms drop heavily back to his side. “You didn't have to deal with people asking if you tried to kill yourself. Did you know they made bets, Derek?”

“No-”

“The entire football team thought I tried to hang myself; half the fucking _school_ thought that I tried to slit my own throat. You didn't have to deal with any of that, not even second-hand, because you just took off.”

“Stiles-”

“I _wish_ that I could have left!” Stiles interrupts. He is going to get all of this out now, get it off his damn chest so that even if Derek takes off again (which seems increasingly likely), at least he will know _exactly_ what he's been missing out on. “I wish that you waited, that you'd taken me with you! I wish-”

“You wouldn't have come even if I asked!” Derek yells. Although Stiles can still see shreds of pity on Derek's face, they're masked by something a lot closer to rage. It actually looks like he's going to wolf out at any moment, and Stiles knows that the longer he talks, the further he strays into dangerous territory, but he doesn't care anymore. 

Even though he knows it's a dark thought to have, he thinks he would welcome Derek tearing into him with his claws again, so long as he promised to finish the fucking job this time around. 

“I would have! What is there for me here?” Stiles answers, gesturing at the massive window that dominates the place, at the shadows of buildings he can see beyond the dirty glass. 

“There's Scott and your dad-”

“They'd manage without me,” Stiles says, unable to stop himself from chuckling slightly. “I'm just holding them back anyways. Scott's trying, but he's busy with so much other stuff. And Dad...” He laughs even harder, feeling his chest get tighter with each second that goes by. He doesn't feel like spelling it out for Derek, but he knows his dad is in way over his head. 

“You shouldn't have left,” he says. “I should have been the one to leave. Fuck that, I... I never should have woken up.” 

“Don't you _ever_ say that,” Derek growls, lunging forward, and Stiles jumps backwards. They could do this dance all day, one step forward and one step back, all around the loft, until one of them just completely snaps. Derek stops, his hands raised slightly, and although Stiles expects claws to come flying out of them, they come up and rest on the side of his face instead, cradling his jaw like Derek is afraid that he'll hurt him more. 

“Don't say that,” Derek repeats and even though Stiles can feel the strength just barely hidden in his hands, the way his thumbs are brushing over his jawbone is bizarrely gentle. Belatedly, he realizes that Derek's fingers are also touching the scar on his neck, but when he tries to pull away, Derek just holds him tighter. The pity and the rage are both gone from his expression now, and Stiles actually has no idea what they've been replaced with. It's not an emotion Stiles has ever seen on Derek's face.

“I shouldn't have left,” he blurts out, like the words actually cause him physical pain. “I know that I ran away again. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't think you'd want me around, not after what I did to you.” 

“You didn't do any of this to me,” Stiles says, and when Derek's thumb brushes over the scar tissue again, he closes his eyes and tries not to wince. “That wasn't you. What _you_ did was leave, when we... when _I_ needed you most.” 

“You don't need me,” Derek mutters, his hands sliding further back, fingers weaving into Stiles' too-long hair. It's a position that should feel way too intimate, but Stiles finds himself pressing his head into it. “I just make things worse, Stiles. I always do. I don't know what to do, I don't know what you need from me. I don't know if I can give you what you need.”

“And you think _I_ know?” Stiles retorts. He doesn't know when or how they got so close, but when Derek's fingers pull slightly, tilting his head back even further, Stiles realizes that he can feel Derek's breath ghosting against his mouth. “I have no idea what I want from you, Derek. I don't know if you're going to be able to help me in any way. Maybe you _will_ just make things worse. But I want to try. Doesn't that count for something?” Derek nods and ducks his head lower until their foreheads are pressed together. 

Stiles feels like his heart is about to burst out of his chest. He doesn't know where these feelings are coming from, but he's shirtless in Derek Hale's arms, and even though he _does_ regret tearing his shirts off (just as he knew he would), he doesn’t want to pull away. 

“It counts for everything,” Derek says quietly. “Can I...”

“Are you going to leave me again?” Stiles asks. It's a cruel question, possibly the cruelest one he's ever asked of anyone, but he refuses to take it back. After a few moments, Derek shakes his head, and Stiles finally moves his hands from his sides and boldly pushes them underneath Derek's jacket. Even through his shirts, Stiles can feel how warm his skin is, and whether it's just the sheer emotional overload of the last few minutes or the other less appropriate thoughts running through his mind, that heat makes his head swim. 

“Okay,” he murmurs. That seems to be what Derek was waiting for; the word has barely left Stiles' mouth before Derek leans in and kisses him. It's not exactly a gentle thing by any means of the imagination; it's more prying, searching, like he's making sure everything before him is real, that it's actually Stiles that he's kissing and not the other thing. His fingers card through Stiles' hair, brush it back away from his face, trail down to his neck again, and Stiles fists his hands in the back of Derek's t-shirt and uses it as leverage to pull them closer together. 

It feels like this has been years in the making and, in some respects, it probably has. Stiles doesn't realize that Derek is walking them backwards until his lower back bumps against the edge of the table; he's too busy, distracted by the way Derek is tilting his head back further and brushing his tongue over his lip. Stiles feels like his legs might just give out. If it weren't for the fact that the table is already in danger of falling apart, he thinks that he would hop up onto it and wrap his legs around Derek's waist. Instead, he just moves until his leg is shoved between Derek's, until he's not quite sure if there's even breathing space left between them. 

And it's good, it's _so_ good, better than anything Stiles has ever experienced. For a few moments, he forgets about the scars, forgets about the way that he doesn't recognize his skin anymore. This is something that he can recognize. This is real, he _knows_ this is real; he's actually kissing Derek Hale, and most remarkably of all, Derek is kissing him back. Derek actually _started_ this. 

It stays good until Derek's palms start running down Stiles' still bare chest, until they settle on his hips. It seems like he's taking care not to touch any of the scars, but as soon as his fingers splay out over Stiles' hips, they unconsciously fit themselves against the ten circular dots that march along his hipbones and his lower back. Stiles is sure he doesn't do it on purpose, but that doesn't seem to matter. As soon as his hands stop moving, Stiles feels other fingers come into motion; spidery, shadowy, dark fingers that reach out from the depths of his mind and start yanking at reality like loose threads on a sweater. 

“Stiles, are you okay?” Derek asks. Although Stiles sees Derek's mouth make the words, sees the worry in his eyes, he can't answer. The words themselves are quiet, like a whisper, and they seem to be moving further away with every second and then, just like that, Derek isn't standing in front of him anymore. 

Well, he is, but he isn't. It's Derek’s body, but Derek himself is long gone, locked away, hidden behind clouded eyes. 

Stiles feels like he's seeing out of pinholes, and when he opens his mouth to scream, nothing happens. There's darkness all around, only a hint of the moon falling through the canopy of the trees, and he can feel the rough wood of a tree trunk against his back. The air smells like blood and he should hate it, but the thing inside him wants more, _needs_ more, which would explain why he can feel more trickling down his hips and soaking the top of his jeans. When Derek’s claws move slightly, pressing forward half an inch into his skin, he spasms and gasps-

-and wakes up with a jolt, wrapped in sheets that are soaked in sweat, shirtless in an unfamiliar room. 

Scratch that; he's never been in this room before, but he knows where it is. He's upstairs at the loft, and half of the wall is glass windows. The room is dark, but Stiles can feel that he's not alone. He rolls onto his opposite side to find Derek sitting in a chair beside the bed, elbows resting on his knees, head in his hands.

“How long was I out for?” he asks. Derek's head slowly lifts up, and he clears his throat slightly. 

“A few hours,” he says. “I carried you up here when you stopped screaming. Should I have just left you alone?”

“No,” Stiles says, swallowing in an attempt to bring moisture back to his throat. “I'm glad you brought me up here. Probably safer. I'm sorry that you had to-”

“Don't apologize,” Derek interrupts, getting up from the chair. Stiles can feel the hesitation before he sits down on the edge of the slightly musty bed. “How often does that happen?” 

Stiles takes a few moments to formulate an answer because truth be told, it all depends on the week. There have been some times where he managed to go three days without having an attack; sometimes, he gets hit with one right after the other and loses an entire day to sleeping and flailing around in a black abyss of blood. 

And that's not including the nightmares. 

“A lot,” he settles on, voice so raspy that he hardly recognizes it. “And you shouldn't have to deal with it. I shouldn't have said all that shit earlier-”

“Stiles,” Derek says firmly, “stop it. You shouldn't have to go through this alone. And you won't, from now on, okay?” He reaches his hand out slowly and when Stiles nods, Derek drops his hand onto his bare shoulder, still clammy from sweat. “And I know about the dreams,” he continues, thumb just barely touching where the long scar on Stiles' neck finally peters off. “I've been getting them too.” 

“Yeah, they kind of suck,” Stiles says, trying to inject some form of levity into the situation. He can feel the last aftershocks of panic draining away from him and normally, this is the time where his dad or Scott would be letting go of him. But now, he wants the opposite to happen; he's exhausted, and he wants someone to stay with him, someone solid that he can lay his hands upon and be assured that he’s back in reality.

“C'mere?” he asks, wrapping his fingers around Derek's wrist. “Or do you have some secret werewolf business that I'm keeping you from?” Derek just snorts and brushes his thumb over the back of Stiles' hand before he throws the sheets aside and slides over. Somewhere along the way, while Stiles was under, he apparently swapped his jeans out for what feel like sweatpants. 

“Scott called while you were gone,” Derek says. “I told him you were okay.”

“Alright,” Stiles murmurs. He has no idea what time it is or how long he was out for, but he's already falling asleep again. Between the aftereffects of the attack and Derek's body heat, he's plenty warm enough without the sheets; the only problem is that he's not exactly sure how to go about falling asleep. As much as he wants Derek nearby, he's afraid of what will happen if his hands accidentally graze another scarred up area.

Derek solves that problem for him; he rolls onto his back and stretches his arm out, looking over at Stiles with a raised eyebrow as if to say _coming_? He slides over until his bead is cushioned against Derek's bicep and after a moment of wriggling around, he decides on laying on his stomach and throwing one of his arms over Derek's waist. 

“Did you want a shirt or anything?” Derek asks, his fingertips just barely brushing over Stiles' shoulder. 

“Wish you’d asked me that _before_ I got comfortable,” Stiles mutters. “But no. I think I'm going to be okay for a bit.” 

For once, it's not a lie.


	24. iii, ix: Scott

As soon as Scott’s lacrosse game ends, he sends Stiles a message to see if he wants to hang out. It goes unanswered, as do the next three he sends in quick succession. He waits two hours, just in case Stiles’ phone died or he was having a nap, but after he still doesn't receive a response, he hops on the dirt bike and heads over to Stiles' house.

When he discovers that the Jeep is gone, his next move is automatic: he fishes his phone out of his pocket and calls Stiles' number, hoping to God that he doesn't hear it go off in the house. Instead, after only three rings, someone picks up. 

That someone is _not_ Stiles, and for a few moments, Scott is convinced that his worst nightmares have come true, that the malevolent being has come back, that their ritual failed. After all, what other explanation is there for Derek answering Stiles' phone, especially since Derek (or Cora, for that matter) hasn't talked to any of them in almost two months? 

“Scott-”

“Where's Stiles?” he asks, glancing up at Stiles' darkened house. 

“He's here,” Derek answers, his voice quiet. “He's okay, Scott.”

“Where is _here_? Where the hell are you?”

“The loft. I've been back for a few weeks.” Scott is glad that he's not having this conversation with Derek face to face, because his eyes flash red and he grips the handlebars of the bike tightly, trying to breathe steadily and deeply.

“And you didn't think to tell any of us that? Do you have any idea what we've been going through?”

“Yes, I know,” Derek sighs and amazingly, he actually sounds like he feels sorry. “Stiles told me. He had an episode, Scott. He's sleeping it off right now.” 

“What set him off?” Derek doesn't say anything for a long time and by the time he finally answers, Scott is about ready to hightail it over to the loft and drag Stiles out of there. 

“I kissed him,” Derek mutters. 

“You kissed him,” Scott repeats. “Like, on the mouth? Like, an actual kiss?” 

“Yeah, an actual kiss,” Derek scoffs.

“And did he kiss you back?" 

“Yes. And then he... he's upstairs, sleeping it off right now. Scott, I didn't know-” 

“It doesn't matter,” Scott interrupts. What matters is that Stiles is safe, that there's someone there with him, someone that he (apparently) wants to be with. So long as Stiles is okay, everything else can wait until tomorrow. “Call me if you need anything. Or if something else happens.” 

“I will, Scott. I'm not taking off again.” 

“Alright,” Scott mutters, ending the call. 

When he gets back home, it's just in time to get a kiss on the forehead from his mom as she breezes out the door for the night shift. The television in the living room is on, and Isaac is stretched out on the couch, feet propped up on the armrest, freshly showered. 

“Hey,” he says, swinging his legs off the couch and sitting up when Scott steps into the living room. “Is Stiles alright?”

“Yeah, he's fine,” Scott sighs, shrugging his jacket off and draping it over the back of the couch. “He's with Derek.”

“What? Since when has he been back?” 

“No idea. He said a few weeks.” Scott slides closer over to Isaac, swipes at a stray bead of water sitting on Isaac’s throat. “But I don't think we need to worry about it, for now. It sounds like he's actually going to be sticking around for awhile.” 

“He better,” Isaac mutters, slumping back into the couch and propping his legs up on the coffee table. “If he leaves again, I will personally kill him.” Scott knows that it's not exactly an idle threat, but he decides to treat like that for the time being. He leans into Isaac's side and presses his nose into his still damp curls. Isaac sighs quietly and turns his head, catching Scott's mouth with his own. Scott immediately moves into it, slides a hand into Isaac's hair and swings his leg over Isaac's lap so that his knees are pressing into the couch on either side of his waist. 

He's very glad that he already heard his mom pull out of the driveway, because as soon as Isaac's hands slide up his back, everything beyond the living room falls away. Isaac's nails are sharp on his skin, a little too sharp to be fully human, and when they drag over his lower back, Scott groans. He uses his grip on Isaac's hair to gently tilt his head to the side, until the pale skin of his neck is on display, practically begging to be decorated with short lived marks. Scott immediately starts in on decorating, pressing his blunt human teeth against Isaac's jaw, cautiously watching for any sign of a negative reaction. 

“Scott?” Isaac asks, groaning when Scott sucks a bruise into the thin skin above where his pulse is racing. Isaac's hands are resting low on Scott's waist, right above his belt, and as Scott nods against his neck, Isaac mercifully pops the buckle open. 

“Yeah? You okay?” Now it's Isaac's turn to nod, and when Scott inhales, all he can smell is _want_ , filling the entire room with its headiness. It's a smell he's become accustomed to over the past few weeks, but it's never been this strong. It makes his head swim in the best possible way. 

“Yeah, I'm great,” he grins, leaning upward for a sloppy, open mouthed kiss. When he pulls away, that grin is still on Isaac’s face, lighting all the way up to his eyes, and Scott doesn't think he's ever seen Isaac look so damn happy. It's contagious; he can feel himself smiling, even as his breath hitches when Isaac draws the zipper of his jeans down, his blue eyes on Scott's.

“Can we go upstairs?” he pants. “This couch is... it's too small for what I want you to do to me.” 

“What's that?” Scott asks, because this is too good to be true; there's no way that Isaac is actually about to say what Scott's been imagining for weeks. This has to be a dream.

Maybe there's something still good in the world, because Isaac licks his lips and says the words that have been running through Scott's head from before the first time they kissed. 

“I want you to fuck me,” he says, palms running underneath Scott's shirt and over his stomach. “Please.” Scott groans and takes a moment to press his face into Isaac's curls again, trying to ground himself, because he feels like he's going to lose control if he isn't careful.

“Are you sure?” he asks, tangling his fingers into the long hair at the back of Isaac's neck. “Are you sure that you want it to be me?” 

“Yes,” Isaac responds, voice almost a growl. “I'm sure, Scott. Want it to be you.” Scott groans again before he nods, leans back down and meets Isaac in a kiss that leaves him dizzy again. He hadn't thought it possible for the room to smell any stronger of pheromones and want, but by the time he pulls away from Isaac's mouth, the smell is nearly overwhelming. 

“Okay,” he finally says, lips still catching against Isaac's. He reluctantly gets off of Isaac's lap and wriggles out of his jeans, leaving them pooled on the floor in front of the couch. He lets Isaac lead the way upstairs, but they only manage to make it to the upstairs hallway before they're kissing again, lost in a tangle of limbs and warm mouths seeking each other out. At some point, Isaac steps back and pulls his white v-neck over his head and tosses it down the hallway, and even though Scott has seen him shirtless plenty of times, he still can't believe that he actually gets to _touch_ , gets to run his hands and mouth down Isaac's chest. 

“You'll let me know if I hurt you?” he asks, one hand sliding over the zipper of Isaac's jeans, the other fumbling at the door knob for his bedroom. “I don't wanna hurt you, Isaac.” 

“Yeah, promise,” Isaac says, and for a second, he sounds so damn solemn that Scott can't help but blink. But then that grin comes back in full force, that wild grin that Scott is sure could stop a damn war (or start one, maybe), and his fingers close over Scott's and twist the door knob. As soon as the door swings open, his fingers latch onto the bottom of Scott's shirt, pull it over his head and toss it down the hall as well, leaving him in only his boxers.

“C'mon, I don't wanna wait any longer,” he says, pulling Scott into the bedroom. Scott just barely has the foresight to kick the door shut behind him before he falls onto the bed, Isaac's body warm underneath him, warm and hard and wanting. Within moments, Isaac is palming at his ass, biting at his neck and whispering _please_ in Scott’s ear. 

Scott feels like he's going to shake out of his skin; he doesn't think he's ever been this nervous in his life, not when he was facing down Deucalion, not when Derek was the Alpha. 

“I don't wanna hurt you,” he repeats, barely aware that he's saying it as he pops the button on Isaac's jeans and tugs them down. “Never want to hurt you.” 

“You won't, Scott,” Isaac says, breaking off into a moan as Scott's hand brushes over where his briefs are pulled taut. “I know you won't, I trust you. I love you.” 

Scott doesn't think he's ever heard words that sounded so sweet.


	25. epilogue part i: Scott

“Scott? Are you awake up there?”

Scott can hear his mother perfectly fine but frankly, he doesn't feel like moving quite yet; he still has ten minutes before his alarm is due to go off. The sun is shining through his open window, and Isaac’s back is pressed against his chest. His arm is slung around Isaac's waist, fingers brushing over his hip, and every time he moves his fingers, Isaac stirs a little. Between the warmth of the sun and the heat roiling off Isaac's body, Scott feels like he might overheat. Maybe this is how snakes feel when they lay on the tarmac, heating themselves up. 

If so, Scott can see why they do it, even at the risk of being run over. 

“Scott?” Now his mom is outside his room, and he knows he should say something but it's too late; the door is already swinging open, and when he glances over, she has her hand in front of her eyes. 

“Please say you’re under the blankets,” she says. 

“Uh... no,” Scott mutters sheepishly. She just sighs and holds up her other hand, which is clutching an envelope.

“I guess you didn't see this last night. Thought you might want to. Please put some clothes on soon?” She flicks the envelope towards the bed and unsurprisingly, it lands on the floor. Scott waits until she's closed the door before he reluctantly slides away from Isaac and moves to the edge of the bed so that he can grab the envelope. 

“What's that?” Isaac mumbles, rolling onto his back, hand slapping into Scott's ribs. He blinks his eyes open slowly, and it doesn't matter how many times Scott’s seen this sight, he still can't get over how amazing Isaac looks in the morning, right after he's woken up, bleary-eyed and tousled hair.

“Looks like a letter,” Scott says, trailing off as he notices the postmark in the corner. It's the official logo of the veterinarian college two towns over that he'd applied to on a passing whim; he hadn't expected to get in at all, even with the work experience he had, but he knows what rejection letters feel like. They're thin, hardly any body to the envelope. This envelope, on the other hand, is thick, and he slowly peels it open. 

The first piece of paper he pulls out is an acceptance letter, dotted with photographs of various animals. Scott gets two paragraphs into the letter before he has to set it aside and flop back against the pillows. Isaac takes it from him, and when he's done reading it, he sets the whole envelope on the floor before he lays down as well, on his stomach with his head turned towards Scott. 

“That's good, isn't it?” he asks softly, his fingers brushing over Scott's waist. “I mean, that's a _really_ good school, Scott.” 

“I know,” Scott replies, his muscles twitching when Isaac's fingers skim over his hip. “I mean, yeah, it's good but...” Sure, the school is less than forty minutes away from home, but in a life or death situation, those forty minutes might make all the difference. Forty minutes is a long way to go when your best friend is suffering from another one of his overwhelming panic attacks, when he's screaming with throat-bleeding ferocity. 

“You're thinking about Stiles, right?” Isaac prompts, and Scott nods. 

“Yeah. I'm just worried. How can I help him if I'm gone?” After a moment, Isaac rolls on top of him, balancing his weight onto his elbows, hovering so close that Scott can feel his curls brushing over his forehead. 

“Scott, you know that Stiles doesn't want to stay here,” he says quietly. “He's wanted out for months. Didn't he apply to the college in that town anyways?” 

“Yeah, I think so. But he hasn't picked yet-” 

“Talk to him about it then,” Isaac interrupts, brushing his nose against Scott's, a move that makes the werewolf side of him growl contently. “I mean, I know that you're worried about him, but actually _talk_ to him about it. Besides, he's been doing better, since...” Isaac doesn't need to finish that sentence for Scott to know what he's talking about. Since Derek came back, Stiles has (slowly, but surely) been getting better. 

Well, maybe better isn't exactly the best way to word it. Truthfully, Scott doesn't know if completely healing is really a possibility. But there have been fewer nights where Scott has woken up on Stiles' floor to him screaming, fewer nights where he's had to hurry him out of class because he was having a panic attack. And through it all, amazingly, Derek has been there. True to his word, he hasn't left again and, for that matter, neither has Cora. She's stuck around, fell right back in with Allison and Lydia like she'd never left in the first place. 

Even though their collective scars are far from healed, at the very least, Scott feels like he has a pack again, one that isn't broken or fractured (for the most part). 

“You're right,” Scott says quietly, bumping his nose against Isaac's again. 

“I know. I'm right a lot.” Scott just rolls his eyes and tilts his head back further until he's kissing Isaac, running his hands through his messy hair. When he pulls away, Isaac is smiling down at him, but even though there's definitely a touch of lasciviousness in his grin, it's also mostly genuine happiness and to Scott, it's as bright as the sun. 

“So, we should celebrate you getting into college,” he murmurs, dragging his lips along Scott's jaw and down to his neck. 

“What about school?” Scott asks, glancing over at his bedside clock. Any second now, the alarm is going to go off, which means they'll have half an hour before they have to leave. But despite the lack of time, Isaac is doing a good job at persuading him, all without saying a single word. 

“I'll be quick,” Isaac says as he presses his teeth against Scott's collarbone and dances his fingers along the elastic band of Scott's boxers. “Promise.” 

That's all it takes to fully convince Scott.


	26. epilogue, part ii: Stiles

For the hundredth time, Stiles jolts awake to the sound of birds chirping in the tree outside his window. But this time, there's no scream dying in his throat, no blood trickling down his chin. Instead, there's just blurry memories of a nightmare, rapidly fading away with each second that passes. 

“Bad dream?” The words brush over the back of his neck, thick with sleep. Stiles just nods his head and reaches down to where Derek's arm is slung over his waist, fingers bunched in the fabric of his shirt. 

“My dad is gonna kill you if he finds you here,” he murmurs, and Derek huffs a laugh into the unscarred skin of his neck. It took Stiles awhile to get used to sleeping on his left side, to dealing with the itch every time the fabric of his sheets brushed over the gnarled skin of his throat, but it had been worth it. 

“No, he's not,” Derek says. “He already knows I'm here. I came in through the front door this time. Easier than the window.”

“Only took you six months,” Stiles snorts, pulling Derek's hand up to his mouth so he can brush a kiss over his knuckles. Derek sighs contently and rubs his nose along Stiles' neck. It's a scent marking thing, one he does after every nightmare Stiles has, and although he makes fun of it sometimes, Stiles is more than happy to admit that he doesn't mind it. 

“Whatever. Morning, by the way.” Stiles glances over at his alarm clock and groans, burying his face into his pillow. 

“It's five o’clock,” he mutters. “I'm going back to sleep.” He wriggles backwards slightly in an attempt to get comfortable again, only to find something worth staying awake for pressed against his ass. 

“Sorry,” Derek murmurs, moving away. “I can leave if you want.” Now it's Stiles' turn to snort as he presses another kiss to Derek's hand, moving backwards to close the space between them. 

“Don't apologize, moron,” he mumbles, turning his head until the tendons in his neck are stretched tight. “And _definitely_ don't leave. Kiss me.” Derek doesn't make a gripe about morning breath or getting more sleep; he simply does what Stiles asks, hooks his chin over his shoulder and kisses him as he slides his hand underneath Stiles' shirt. Even when his fingers brush over the claw scars permanently embedded in his hip, Stiles doesn't jolt away. 

Truth be told, he barely notices, because those gnarled shadow fingers stay firmly in the back of his mind, leaving him alone for the time being.

They won't stay away forever, of course; they'll come back eventually, when he least expects it. But their grip on him won't last as long; he'll only lose fifteen or twenty minutes as opposed to three hours. His throat won't hurt as much when he comes back to reality, and there will be someone there when he comes back. There's always someone there, whether it's Scott or his dad or Derek. 

Yes, the scars still exist, and there are still holes in his memories, holes that he'll never be able to fill in (and that he doesn't really _want_ to fill in, truthfully). Those two things are never going to change, nor is he going to be able to escape the fact that no matter where he goes, people are going to stare at him. It's just going to happen. 

But somewhere along the way, that became less important. He's reconciled himself to the existence of those things. What matters is that he doesn't have to deal with that shit alone. He has people who care for him, who just want to help, who _don't_ pity him, even if his mind sometimes insists him that they do. 

He gained scars, but he also gained Derek. He lost parts of his memory, lost some of his skin, but he kept his friends, kept his family. 

Maybe it's not exactly an even trade. But, as Derek slides one hand into his pajamas and grips him tightly, Stiles thinks that it's close enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> editing this story was a journey, and I can't help but wonder how much different it would have been had I written this story now, as opposed to 2014. as is, the original, unedited draft of this was just over 69,600 words. the copy I edited in Microsoft Word topped out at 56,204 words, and then you have the final draft here. I cut out entire chapters, and while I'm still not entirely happy with the finished result, it's certainly a lot better than it was when I originally finished it three years ago.
> 
> thank you so much to everyone who read, commented, left kudos, etc. I really appreciate it. <3


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